Sho's Theory of Relativity
by Tripleguess
Summary: They were words in her memory that didn't belong there, like crumbs on the carpet after someone had been indiscreet about Borrowing.
1. Chapter 1

"And what's that? And that?" She pointed frantically, stabbing everything in turn with her finger, wild to have it named and explained before it shifted out of view.

"Cotton candy - organ grinder - trinket vendor - hot dog stand -" He was out of breath, just as eager to explain as she was to have it explained.

"How can it be cotton and candy? How can a hot dog stand?" she shouted, pounding on his fist. Her blows felt like pinpricks, like ant bites.

"I'll get you some," he said simply, and slid her into his pocket. No one, absolutely no one, spent time examining other people's breast pockets at the fair unless they were looking for wallets, and he'd made sure to tuck his quite prominently in his back pants pocket. Someone would swipe it before the night was out - that was why he had his money tucked into his belt - but better that than that they should spot or grab Arrietty. The cotton candy lady, and the hot dog seller, couldn't have cared less what he had in his shirt pocket; their eyes were glued on the bills in his hand.

"Here." He ducked into a darkish place between a dunk-the-clown booth and a covered stall with cheap jewelry sprawled over its display table. Arrietty emerged from his pocket, her hair a bit fritzed from rubbing against his shirt; her eyes darted this way and that, double checking that the coast was clear. He smiled to himself; always that bit of wild animal in her behavior, of something accustomed to a harsh and primal world where one had to watch one's back.

He broke off crumbs of hot dog and cotton candy for her. He gave her the meat first, not wanting to spoil its taste with the overly sweet cotton candy. Her eyes went wide as she smelled, nibbled, and chewed; she shut her eyes, relishing the flavor. Next door, a huge splash and squeals and clapping announced a successful clown-dunk. Water splatted against the canvas behind him. He shifted to shield Arrietty from whatever splashed through the coarse fabric.

She wasn't as keen on the cotton candy. She almost choked, in fact, so startled was she by a substance that looked dry and solid and nothing like food and then _vanished_ in her mouth leaving only a cloying sweetness. Her tiny coughs distressed him.

"Hang on, I'll get some water." He wished he'd thought of that before. It only took a moment to buy a bottle from a vending machine, but she'd turned red by that time. He tipped a few drops into the cap and anxiously watched her drink. It was like drinking out of a salad bowl for her, but she thought nothing of it. Borrowers were adaptable. If they had good food and clean water to drink, they weren't picky about the containers it came in.

"It's getting late," he said reluctantly, when her coughing had eased. "I should get you back."

"Just one more place," she begged. Her eyes shone like stars; hot dog grease and cotton candy mixed on her fingers, now laced together entreatingly.

"All right, we'll pop by the... the funhouse, then!"

It was a good choice. Most of the crowds were at the haunted house across the way - he had no intention of taking Arrietty anywhere near that place - and in a place full of distortions, people would be even less likely to notice a tiny person.

"Sho!" Arrietty squealed, pointing. "You're small!"

"So I am," he laughed, and waved. In his reflection, a tiny Sho with a pin-sized Arrietty in his pocket - visible solely as a flare of bright hair against his shirt - waved back. The mirrors did other things. The two of them were fat; they were amazingly skinny. They were bowed in the middle and stretched at the ends. And in one...

"Look, Sho," Arrietty whispered. "I'm... _big_."

Their eyes met, solemn with unspoken thoughts. Sho looked around, then lowered her to the floor and stepped back. People laughed around the unseen corners, but they were safe for the moment.

Arrietty turned again, regarding her enormous self. Her self, as tall as Sho - taller, even; her build was longer, lankier, and she was a bit ahead of him in terms of growth. This new, tall Arrietty locked eyes with Sho, until no one was sure who was a reflection and who wasn't.

X X X

"Arrietty!"

Arrietty woke with a start. Irregular patches of shadow swam in front of her eyes; she rubbed her face, and they resolved into a rough dirt roof mere feet over her head. Grass roots poked through, some threatening to tickle the blankets.

"Arrietty, dear, are you all right?" Her mother was leaning over her, worriedly smoothing her nightgown. Arrietty had flung the blankets off some time during the night. "You were talking in your sleep. Something about _big..._ Did you have a bad dream?"

"No... no, Mama." Arrietty caught the kind, aging fingers and quieted them with a sleepy kiss. "Not a bad dream. Just... a dream."

Her mother petted her a little longer and then, satisfied all was well, went back to bed. Arrietty got the blankets straightened out and sank back into the milk thistle mattress.

"The only bad part was waking up," she murmured.

_And what on earth was a funhouse?_


	2. Chapter 2

_"ARRRRRRRRIEEEEEEETTYYYYYYYYY!"_

The shriek was high, thin and piercing. It jolted her out of a sound sleep. She slapped her hands over her ears and felt grass between her fingers. The sunlight was blinding. She closed her eyes against it.

"Oh, Arrietty!" Her mother wasn't shrieking anymore, but her voice was still distressed. She was on the verge of tears. "You _did_ have a bad dream, didn't you?"

Arrietty blinked. Her face felt gritty. She touched her cheek and found dust, dust migrating down from clumps in her hair, clumps prickly with grass roots. She looked down and saw the blankets, with their careful, ever so slightly irregular stitches - the size of napkins, perched over her navel, rising and falling with her breath. The buttons on her pajamas were the size of... well, _buttons -_ human bean buttons, that is. From the waist up she was above the grass; she could see bluebells that were only as high as her elbow, bees the size of her thumbtip. From the waist down... well, she was afraid the lumps between her toes were their pots and pans, which meant her foot was in the kitchen.

Her mother was hovering near Arrietty's right hand, which was planted firmly in the bedroom's fireplace. The ashes were warm around her fingers. Arrietty wanted to comfort her, but she was afraid Mama would run if she moved her now enormous hand.

"Not a bad dream, Mama," Arrietty stammered. "Just a... a _big_ dream."

X X X

"I never thought," her father said solemnly, "that bigness could be contagious."

Arrietty wrung her hands. She was happier than not to find that it was, but... "Are you sure I _caught_ bigness from talking to - to human beans?"

Her father sighed and took a sip of his coffee. They had moved this little conference outdoors, since Arrietty was already mostly outdoors anyway, and Arrietty had done their dugout burrow the dignity of removing her hinter parts from it. She now sat crosslegged on the grass and the clover while her parents sat on pebbles perched atop a squirrel mound. This saved them from having to crane their necks until they snapped to get a look at their daughter.

"I'm _not_ sure," he admitted, "but of the three of us, only _you_ have gotten big, and only you have talked to a human bean."

He was not being accusative, merely stating facts. Arrietty winced anyway. "Mama saw him too..." More specifically, he had also seen Mama.

"Eh, but she didn't talk to him."

Mama, who had been fiddling with her teacup until now, nodded at this point. "He had a nice face," she recalled, a generous statement considering her situation at the time. "But I didn't talk to him."

And she didn't touch him, either, Arrietty thought. No need to bring that up just now. "Then, do you think I could get small again by tou- er, by _talking to_ a Borrower?"

Homily sprang up. "That should do it, then, shouldn't it?" she cried. "We're talking to you right now!" Then she wilted, like a light going out. "But nothing's happened."

"We don't know that yet," her father said sensibly. "It took a few days for her to get big. Maybe she's already back on her way to small."

Oh, not yet! Arrietty looked about pleadingly, at the fields that were no longer so dangerous, at ravens croaking on the fence who she could now approach with impunity, at little streams and puddles and cow prints that didn't pose any great barrier to her new body.

But all she said was, very sensibly, "Well, shouldn't I fix the dugout then, before I go back to being small?"

"That's a good idea." Father finished his coffee and came over to pat her knee. A touch; but it was through the pajamas, not skin on skin. Maybe that didn't count. She'd been _talking_ to her family for weeks since _then_, and it hadn't kept her from becoming big. If bigness really was contagious, she rather thought it was touch that passed it on and not talking.

"But where is she going to sleep in the meantime?" Mama, ever a mother, hovered as near the enormous knee as she dared come. "She's outside now, in the wind and the rain."

Arrietty hadn't thought of that. From her father's grave expression, he _had_ thought of it but hadn't wanted to say anything until he thought of a solution too.

"Well..." Arrietty didn't want them to be anxious. She peered about, shading her eyes; her mother flinched when she raised her hand, but Father didn't budge. After a minute, she lowered it.

"I see a cowshed, there in the corner of the field." She pointed, but from the waist, so as not to frighten Mama by whipping her hand up. "Maybe there is something I can Borrow - blankets or - an umbrella, or something."

"So far away," her mother whispered. "Why, that cowshed is _yards_ and _yards_ from here!"

"It's not far, Mama." Arrietty smiled, brightened with an excitement she couldn't hold back. "Not for me!"


	3. Chapter 3

For Arrietty, the cowshed but a means to an end. Yes, she would need _something_ to cover up with at night, and she didn't want to think about what she would do when it rained - but more importantly, she wanted to go somewhere! She wanted to try out this new huge stride of hers, to walk over instead of under the grass, to feel the wind -

_Shplut._ She looked down to find her foot in the middle of a fresh cow patty. Well, she consoled herself, before this morning she would have drowned in it. Wouldn't _that_ have been a lovely way to go.

The field was a thousand new sights today, a thousand things she had never seen. Birds were jewel-like, the size of her hand, where before they had been like living clouds. Flowers were puffs and speckles of color instead of enormous veined bells and petals. Insects were so small that she had to squint to see the rolly-pollies around her feet. Weasels stared and then ran when they saw _her,_ instead of the other way around. And the ravens scolded and clung to the fence, but they didn't attack her.

There was only one bad thing about this marvelous walk, and that was that she was making it in her pajamas. Wearing her Borrowing dress had been simply out of the question. Knowing this, she had still pulled it out of the bureau (now slightly crooked from having supported her hand at one point) and held it up, pathetically small, against her chest. Hopefully no one had seen that. Her boots were likewise still miniature. Only her pajamas had grown along with her, presumably because she'd been wearing them at the time. And so, without her boots or her Borrowing dress, she felt terribly unprepared for the world. She was a Borrower without her equipment.

But, she reminded herself, she was still a Borrower. And there was nothing else to be done except sit down and snivel, and that wasn't Arrietty's way. So she wiped the bits of cow patty off on the grass and kept going.

The cow shed didn't look as promising close up as it had from across the field. The boards were so weathered that the cracks were two or three inches wide, and peppered with empty knotholes that could fit two Borrowers at a go - three, if they were as thin as Homily. She could peek through the knotholes and see through the shed to the pump on the outside of the opposite wall. A cupboard in this condition rarely held food, and the Borrower in Arrietty wanted to turn around and try somewhere else - but, she had to remind herself, she wasn't looking for food.

There was a padlock on the door. But the latch was so eaten with rust that Arrietty, after a calculating look, eased its screws straight out of the wood and laid it, in the manner of the Borrowers (who never damage anything) in one piece on the grass.

The inside was slotted with sunlight falling through the cracks, so she had no great difficulty seeking except when a sunbeam jumped straight in her eyes. There was a box of tools, a sealed crate, a first aid kit. Aha! Here, a stack of moth-eaten blankets folded on a shelf next to a pile of rags, and two buckets, and a large bottle of iodine. Arrietty didn't know that the men who kept the cows used these things to take care of newborn calves. She sniffed the iodine and wrinkled her nose, then peeled a blanket off the bottom of the stack. It wasn't as dusty as the one on top.

There was no umbrella, to her disappointment. She took a bucket instead. It felt a bit awkward compared to normal Borrowing; a Borrower never took half of a hundredth of something, let alone one of two. But there was no other option except take to take nothing. She couldn't cut the bucket into pieces. Anyway, she promised herself, she would bring it back as soon as she no longer needed it. When that might be, she didn't know, but it eased her conscience.

Then her eyes caught on something on the wall. It was small, weatherproof, shiny. It looked out of place in the shed. Someone had been taking care of it. It was a small wooden cupboard screwed firmly into a support post.

She ran her fingers along the top of the cupboard door; dust, but not as much as on the blanket pile. Someone had used it more recently. Cautiously, she swung the cupboard open. She was rewarded by the dull gleam of plastic and a three-by-three row of square buttons.

She was looking at a telephone.


	4. Chapter 4

The world seemed to stop and then to spin, slowly, as if everything else in the little old cowshed drifted up and out and away while Arrietty and that phone regarded each other. She knew what it was. There had been one on the counter, in _that_ house. And mostly, _she_ had used it - the housekeeper who had been the real source of all their troubles. She had called the exterminators with it. Arrietty gulped and shuddered.

And yet...

She flexed her fingers, wondering what it would feel like - the hard plastic against her fingers. The housekeeper had called lots of people with the phone, not just the exterminators. She had called neighbors. She had called old friends. She had called her grandchildren. She had chatted for hours, the headpiece propped against her shoulder while she chopped and stirred and seasoned and opened the mail. Then she would hang up and complain about the crick in her neck. Arrietty remembered the wonder of that, of hearing her talk to the mysterious Other Voices on the other end of the phone line, while Arrietty sat inside the wall with her back against the wrong side of a kitchen outlet and pressed her ear to the crack.

There were no Other Voices for Borrowers. There were hardly even Other Borrowers, except for Spiller - who communicated, when he felt like it, in monosyllabic grunts and disappeared into the wild for weeks at a time. There was, in short, no one to talk to outside of the family. What would it be like, she wondered, to pick up a Borrower phone and hear another Borrower on the other end? What would it be like to have _someone to call?_

"Information, please."

Arrietty jumped, but the words had been her own, another half-memory of life before the great upheaval. The housekeeper had said that phrase all the time. When she didn't know something, she would pick up the phone and say "Information, please." Then she would ask for the temperature or the weather report, or for a friend's number that she had forgotten. Sometimes, when a delivery man came, she would stop him and ask to see the weather report on his cell phone, but she had never gotten a cell phone of her own. She had said she was too old to learn how to work them, but Arrietty had always suspected that she was just too lazy to learn something new, especially when Information, Please already knew everything.

Had Sho had a cell phone?

The thought stopped her cold. Whenever she had seen him during those fleeting summer days, he had always had a book, or he had put the book facedown to pet the cat. Whether he had a cell phone or not, she had never seen him use one.

Perhaps he, too, had had no one to call.

It wouldn't hurt just to pick it up, would it? Arrietty set the bucket down, following the handle with her hand so it wouldn't clang against the sides. She set the blanket on top. She glanced over her shoulder, out the open door. There was nothing; there was no one. Not the sound of an engine, not the cries of disturbed birds or the unnatural silence that usually preceded a Human Bean out for a stroll. And she knew, with a twinge of guilt, that there was no way anyone from the dugout could see or hear her from this far away...

She eased the phone off its hook. The plastic was cool, smooth, clean. To her surprise, someone was already talking.

"-and then the skunk crawled under the barn and died! I swear, it's going to smell for weeks!"

"Oh, but what a relief that the baby's okay."

"Indeed! Our Shep can do no wrong now!"

Fascinated, Arrietty sank down to perch on the bucket, eyes wide as she listened to two middle-aged women chattering. Eventually a third voice joined the conversation, a breathless teenage girl who needed the line _right now_. The two women gave place after a few good-natured remarks about boyfriend "emergencies" and hung up.

"Operator? This is AngelaandIneedtotalktoHarry_right_nowit'sveryIMPORTANT-"

The teenage girl talked so fast that Arrietty couldn't follow her, but the operator was apparently used to this and put the call through without missing a beat. Harry picked up, sounding irritable and distracted. Angela went off into another hyperfast monologue, with a few tears thrown in for effect, and Harry grunted a few times and then said he would come over after dinner. Arrietty giggled to herself, imagining Spiller using a phone.

Arrietty had no way of knowing that the phone she was holding - used by farm hands to call the main house - was part of a rural party line, or that anyone on the party line could pick up and listen in on other people's conversations just as she was doing, or that the party line system was rare outside of small and isolated communities. All she knew was that a rich social world beckoned from inside that magical box.

Harry and Angela hung up and the line was silent for a few minutes. Then a pleasant female voice said, "Can I put your call through?"

It was the operator. And, Arrietty realized, she was talking to _her._


	5. Chapter 5

Arrietty gulped. "How did you know I was here?"

The operator chuckled. She had a kind, grandmotherly voice. "I have lights and a beeper on my switchboard. It tells me when someone picks up their phone. Or when they forget to put it back on the hook," she added wryly.

Arrietty gulped again. Sho had said there were something like _six billion_ Human Beans, back when she'd been able to count on one hand the Borrowers she knew of. Actually... she still needed only two hands. "Anywhere in the _world?"_

The operator chuckled again. "No, sweetie, just on the party line. Are you visiting? I don't recognize your voice."

"Yes... yes." Arrietty sighed, and nodded, though the woman couldn't see her. This was truer than she liked to think about; Borrowers were _always_ visiting, and never knew how long they'd be able to stay. "Just... visiting. I don't know anyone's number."

"Well, aren't you lucky! I know them all by heart. Just give me a name."

Arrietty thought the plastic might buckle under her fingers. "A name? S.. Sh..."

She couldn't get the name out. She wasn't supposed to talk about him. She had to. "Sho!"

"I'm so sorry, honey." The operator sounded genuinely regretful. "There's no Sho on this party line."

"Wait!" Arrietty jumped up, launching the bucket backward. It rolled into the wall, taking the blanket with it. "Sadako! His aunt Sadako - he's staying with his great-aunt Sadako."

"Sadako Yamanichi? That family's been in this county for ages. She's not on this party line, but I can look up her number. Just a moment." A pause. Arrietty heard a series of clicks. "There you go. Nice talking to you!"

"You too," Arrietty squeaked. But the phone was already ringing.

She sank absently to the floor and crossed her legs. Her fingers were trembling. Talking to Human Beans was forbidden, and she was pretty sure that talking on telephones was too, only no Borrower had ever been in a position to do it before so no one had yet thought to spell out the restriction. That was two rules she'd broken already, and she was about to do it again.

And the phone was still ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She squeezed her eyes shut, on the edge of a cliff, not knowing if in the next second -

"Yamanichi residence."

Her heart stopped. It was the housekeeper.


	6. Chapter 6

"Sho."

In Arrietty's memory the housekeeper was a hundred feet tall and made scary faces. She put Borrowers in jars with plastic on top and called more Human Beans to kill them. That was who Arrietty was talking to, a dangerous giantess. In Arrietty's fear-frozen mind, there was only one person who might be able to face her. "Sho, help me!"

"Sho's not here," the housekeeper said gruffly. "He's at the hospital for a check-up."

Arrietty fluttered in the wind, a piece of laundry left out to dry. Her body had changed overnight. A lifetime of fears and traditions did not change so easily. It took as much courage for her to string together her words as it would for an ordinary woman to face down a lioness.

But... _Sho was alive._ She had to know! "When... will he... be back?" she squeaked.

"Tomorrow." And the housekeeper hung up.

"That was rude," the operator observed.

Arrietty jumped. She hadn't realized that the operator had stayed on the line. Nor did she realize that the woman was being a bit nosy; as far as Arrietty knew, eavesdropping on a party line was the norm, to be expected, and the operator was supposed to monitor each and every conversation.

"Was it?" Arrietty said shakily.

"I'll say it was! Listen, honey, you keep calling. Sooner or later she'll have to let you talk to Sho. And if she doesn't, why, _I'll_ talk to her."

"You will?" Arrietty wilted with relief. The thought of having an ally in this scary telephone battle was heartening. "Oh, thank you. I'll come back tomorrow."

She hung up. Then she clapped her hands over her mouth. What had she said? _Come back tomorrow?_

Her chin came up. Sho was alive. "I will," she said aloud. "Yes, I will."

Then she darted frightened glances through the cracks, through the open door. "I will," she whispered, trembling. "If I don't get caught."

X X X

She spent most of the trip back picking floorboard splinters out of the seat of her pajamas. The blanket, once she'd beaten the dust out of it, fit nicely into the bucket, but the bucket had a tendency to bang awkwardly against her hip. She had a bruise by the time she got home.

"Home" was announced by broken clods of dirt underfoot, pieces of roof hidden by the grass that bruised her bare feet, and an angry whine past her ear. She ran a hand through the air, trying to erase the annoying sound. "Spiller! Stop it! It's me!"

Another whine. She sighed and sat down, swinging the bucket behind her. "Look. It's me. Arrietty. Didn't Father tell you?"

There was a long silence. Arrietty sighed again and leaned back on her hands, staring up at the sky. Her whole body felt shaky - and there was a lot of it to feel shaky with, now. A flock of ravens flew overhead; she didn't duck, only followed them with her eyes. She could get used to this.

"Arrietty?"

It was her mother's voice. Arrietty followed the sound with her eyes, appreciating for the first time what restraint Sho had exercised around her. It was hard not to make sudden, sweeping movements - movements that would give her mother a heart attack.

"Mama?" Arrietty tilted her head, gently, at a clump of grass. "It's me. Tell Spiller not to shoot me."

Spiller popped out first, glaring. He looked confused when he saw her face, Arrietty's face, far above the grass tops.

"Hi, Spiller," she said softly. She wanted to wave, but her better instincts kept her hand down. "Sorry I scared you."

_"Not_ scared," he spat, and disappeared.

Oops. She rubbed her eyes. This was probably rather difficult for him. "Mama?"

"I don't think he'll shoot at you anymore," Homily assured her. She stepped out to fill the spot Spiller had just vacated. "How did your Borrowing go?"

"It was, er, good!" Arrietty eased the bucket around to one side where her mother could see it, and reached - slowly, slowly - to lift the blanket out. Her arms quivered with the effort of holding weight out like that, awkwardly, away from her side. "I got a blanket to stay warm at night, and, um, a bucket to put over my head in case it rains. There weren't any umbrellas. Can I look at the dugout?"

Of course, she could see it from here, but she was really asking for permission to come closer.

"We've got it all patched up," Homily said proudly, and waved her in. "Come and see."

Arrietty crawled after her on all fours, trusting Spiller to stay out of her path. Now she had stained pajama knees to match the dust stains on her bottom.

The bare dirt layer Arrietty had spread over a quickly woven twig ceiling was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she spotted hints of braided grass - mulch - peeking out around and underneath the full, happy foliage of newly transplanted plants - grasses, flowers, and patches of lichen. The plants had hardly noticed that they'd been moved. Borrower fingers were clever with delicate things like roots. "No one will ever find it," she said in relief. "You're both wonderful!"

"Father dear did most of it," Homily said modestly.

"Spiller helped too." Pod appeared at the dugout door. He looked Arrietty over hopefully, trying to gauge whether she had shrunk at all, but she looked just as... _big_... as before. But she was still his daughter and he was glad to see her back. "So you found a blanket? That's good!"

"Yes, but I have another problem." Arrietty smiled weakly and curled up on her side, propping her chin in her palm. At the size she was now, no one could help noticing when her stomach growled; Homily jumped, Father twitched, and Arrietty distinctly heard Spiller fall out of a cowslip.

"I'm hungry."


	7. Chapter 7

Blackberries did not make a very satisfying supper. Especialy not after having them for breakfast and lunch.

Nor were the plants kind to Bean-sized digits. Arrietty wriggled a hand free of the scratchy blanket so she could suck her fingers. She wished she had some band-aids. Pod had Borrowed some occasionally to stick leaves of paper together or to make patches on the roof. Now she could imagine how useful they'd be to keep dirt and blanket fuzz out of the long red scratches on her hands.

"But of course!" She shot up. "The first aid kit!"

All the crickets stopped singing. Spiller grunted disapprovingly. He hadn't yet gotten over his shock at Arrietty's sudden size change and expressed his feelings mostly by staying out of sight. He was camped out somewhere under the grass. Homily had never been able to get him to sleep indoors.

"Sorry," Arrietty whispered, and lay back down. Overhead, the moon gleamed, a smooth golden quarter high in the sky. The bruise on her hip throbbed, so she turned over, carefully, to lay on her other side. She missed her thistledown mattress - the one that was currently the size of her hand.

She could see the entrance of the burrow, a darker spot close to her elbow. She hoped she hadn't woken her parents. But the thought had come to her and now she held on to it; surely it would be all right for her to Borrow a few band-aids in the morning. It would give her a legitimate reason to go back to the cow shed. Another urgent reason being that she was going to need a Bean-sized breakfast tomorrow, and she was already tired of berries.

Maybe...

"Information, please."

She'd spoken softly. The crickets hesitated, then resumed their songs full tilt. Spiller, if he noticed, chose not to say anything. Arrietty tapped her lips thoughtfully. The housekeeper at the old house had asked Information Please all kinds of questions. Maybe the kind voice on the phone knew about Information Please and could tell her where a decent Human Bean breakfast might be found.

She let that thought mix with the sounds of the stream and the chorus of the frogs. Overhead, a falling star glittered. She had never thought about the challenges of having a Bean-size appetite - well, until now. Not to mention needing Bean-sized clothes. It was so awkward to go about Borrowing in one's pajamas. Fortunately the people in the phone couldn't _see_ her.

It was not in the nature of most Borrowers (except Homily) to worry about problems too far ahead of facing them. And so Arrietty, with potential solutions to most of tomorrow's problems floating about it her head, fell asleep quickly. No one noticed the little cluster of Borrowers or the sleeping Human Bean except the rolly-pollies busily moving into the new dugout roof.

X X X

It was twilight when something pulled her out of a sound sleep.

She lay there for a minute, feeling the edge of the blanket tickling her nose - but that wasn't what had woken her up. She could see the first hints of the sun thinking about coming up, in the east, toward the cowshed; the cowshed was a boxy black silhouette in that direction. The sky was clear, still speckled with stars, and the summer predawn air was cool and moist against her forehead. There was no wind; it was still.

Too still. The crickets had stopped singing. And this time, it wasn't anything she had done.

Arrietty eased up on one elbow, then almost jumped out of her skin when something large and clumsy thundered past her. Twin streaks of silver followed; one actually leaped over her, and she caught the flash of a pale furry belly.

Coyotes. They were chasing a calf. She had glimpsed the whites of its eyes, huge with terror.

She threw the blanket off and grabbed the bucket. They were running it into the fence, cornering it. This did not surprise Arrietty, who had grown up cheek by jowl with the brutality of nature. Two days ago there would have been nothing she could do.

Her feet slammed into the grass, and she moved faster than she'd ever moved in her short life, sailing over yards of ground that would have taken ages to cross as a Borrower. The calf had its back to the fence now. It lowered its head and blew, gamely threatening with horns it had yet to grow. The coyotes were nipping at its nose, crowding it backward.

"Go on!" Arrietty heaved the bucket at them. It struck one and bounced into the fence. They both startled backwards and wheeled on her, snarling at this new threat.

Oops. Maybe she should have kept the bucket in her hands. Too late now.

"Get!" she screamed, smacking her hands together until her palms burned while she edged toward the bucket. If she could get hold of it before they made up their minds to attack, it would make a decent club. "Leave'm! Leave'm alone!"

The coyotes wavered, torn between hunger and their fear of Human Beans. Arrietty's heart was in her throat, but she kept the pressure on, angling closer to the fence and the bucket. Maybe she could make them crack, make them run.

She would never know. So focused was she on the life-and-death argument she was having that she hadn't heard the rumble of an approaching engine. All she knew was that she was suddenly blind, standing with her hands out in front of her face in a wave of cold blue light.

"G' on with ye! Git! Git!"

It was a male voice, deeper and older than Sho's. A sharp crack followed, and another. She heard a yelp, and the quick patter of coyotes running, and the heavier, stronger tread of a farm dog. A car door slammed.

Arrietty lowered her hands just in time to be knocked to her knees from behind. A furry bulk crowded up behind her; the calf, seeking comfort against her warm backside. It was waist high and weighed more than she did, and didn't seem to realize that its snuggling was powerful enough to knock her over. She had put her hands around its neck, trying to fend off the slimy wet nose and regain her balance, when a second beam of light blinded her again. She hid her eyes against the calf's shoulder.

"Saint Peter's pinky!"

The light went away, played over the bucket, the cowshed. Arrietty, terrified, got up and gathered herself to run, but the calf shoved up against her again and she slipped on the dew-slick grass.

"It's all right, lassie." The farmer had some experience with frightened animals, and something told him that he was not dealing with one of his neighbor's schoolgirls. He put his rifle back in its rack in the truck bed and turned the engine off, then crouched down against the wheel to be less threatening while he talked to her through the fence. "Thanks be you're all right, you and the little'un. An' the pack had been bigger, you'd have been in real danger."

"Pa! Pa!" The far door slammed. "Is Beauty hurt? Did you get the coyotes?" A fair-haired girl scrambled around the front of the truck and slipped through the wires.

"Sissy, wait just a -"

"Oh my word!" Sissy flew to the calf and threw her arms around its neck, tangling limbs with Arrietty. The calf licked her cheek. "You bad cow! We've been looking for you all night! Hey, are you okay?" This to Arrietty.

Arrietty's lips parted. It was lighter now; the sun was edging a red sliver of itself above the windbreaks edging the field, throwing red gleams along the cab of the truck and making an orange halo out of Sissy's hair. Sissy seemed about nine years old, with angelically huge brown eyes, and looked like less of a threat than a rolly-polly. "I -"

But Sissy didn't let her answer. "Oh, nooo! Your poor hands! They're all scratched up! Pa, Pa!"

Sissy pulled her up, gently, by the wrist. Then she reached over and grabbed the calf's collar.

"We'll get your bell fixed and back on your collar, young lady - we'll see if you still have a hankering to be veal after today's adventure!" And, to Arrietty, "Come back with me and get your cuts treated. No, I _insist._ They look infected. Where have you been sleeping, in the dirt?"

"I, I, I -" Arrietty glanced helplessly over her shoulder, back at the dugout, somewhere out of sight under the grass. The glance wasn't lost on the farmer. Nor were the dirty pajamas, the bare feet, the half wild look in her eyes.

"Just come with us and have a good breakfast, as thanks for saving Beauty," he said soothingly. "Afterwards we can drop you off, wherever you want to go."

He had a kind face, like Father's, but he was mostly bald on top, with whiskers on his jowls. Arrietty hesitated. If she went with Sissy, her mother would be worried sick; she'd torn off without telling anyone where she'd gone. But if she marched back to the dugout right now, to tell her parents what was going on, her secret would be as good as out and she'd be putting them all in danger. Again.

"Do come!" Sissy pushed Arrietty through the fence in a friendly manner, while the farmer lifted the calf over the top. "Mom is making waffles and they're just _yummy."_


	8. Chapter 8

So it was that Arrietty found herself hanging to the side of the truck bed for dear life while the truck engine roared to life. She looked across the bed at Sissy, who was braced against the opposite wheel well. The calf was on a blanket between them, its legs folded neatly underneath its fuzzy belly. Sissy had one hand on its collar just in case, but as soon as the diesel engine started it closed its eyes and went to sleep.

Arrietty glanced at the cab. The farm dog, a blue merle Aussie with mismatched eyes, couldn't decide whether to sit down next to the farmer and look out the windshield or put his paws on the back of the seat and watch the girls. Every time she looked at him, he barked and wagged his stump of a tail. Flakes of dried mud and grass vibrated in the grooves of the metal bed. She looked back at the cowshed on the other side of the fence, at the field surrounded by windbreak trees, at the stream that had brought her family here - so long ago, it seemed. Now she wouldn't be able to use that phone...

"Are you sure this is safe?" she couldn't help asking, as the farmer shifted gears and pulled away from the fence. There was no road, only a vague path where the grass grew less densely - and then, acres and acres of grass with the view interrupted by clusters of trees so that, though Arrietty got a sense of lots of space, she couldn't really see that far.

Sissy shrugged. Her hair was pulled back in a hasty ponytail, and now wisps of it were escaping to blow everywhere in the wind. "I've never fallen out yet," she said, and laughed as the truck swerved and bumped over squirrel mounds and other irregularities in the terrain. Arrietty liked Sissy's laugh, but she wasn't sure she liked riding in the back of a truck.

After driving farther than Arrietty had ever traveled in her entire life, the farmer made a sharp turn onto a gravel road. The ride was less bumpy now and Arrietty relaxed. Her eyes never stopped moving, recording landmarks so she could find her way home. There a dead tree with two bird nests in its naked branches. There a badger hole at the base of a willow. Here a fence post that leaned theatrically, trailing two wires on the ground.

"We need to fix that," Sissy remarked. "That's probably how Beauty got away from the herd."

Hopefully they wouldn't fix it too soon. It made a nice landmark.

The farmhouse was a long, low building set in the center of a neat gravel yard, with flowers around the walkways. The narrow side of the house faced south so as to catch less of the oppressively hot sun during summers. A neat white fence enclosed the farm yard, which included the house, a barn northwest of the house, a long feeding shed wrapped around the north side of the farm yard, and a swing set on a square of overgrown grass in the south corner of the yard. The barn and feeding shed opened out into pasture land to the north and west, pasture land that backed into gradually rising hills topped with forest. The truck pulled into the yard just as the sun tired of waiting and lifted himself fully into the sky.

"Ma! Ma!"

Sissy was out of the truck before it stopped moving, leaving Arrietty alone with the calf. Arrietty gasped and scrambled across the metal bed to grab the calf's collar. It flicked an ear and licked her face, then went back to sleep. A square of warm yellow light opened onto the yard, silhouetting Sissy in mid-stride, then blinked out. The _slam_ echoed across the farm yard, out into the hills, and back again.

"That girl," the farmer groused, climbing out of the truck. "Come on, Radar."

The Aussie bounded out after him and ran circles in the gravel, nose to the ground, making sure nothing interesting had happened while he'd been gone. Arrietty heard chickens clucking from the direction of the barn, and a rooster's crow. Then, after a minute, a cow's insistent lowing. The calf woke up, called back, and climbed to its feet, with Arrietty keeping an uncertain grip on its collar.

"That'll be Beauty's mother. Give me a hand, lass."

Arrietty wasn't sure how much help she really was, but the farmer made her feel like she was helping as they guided the calf across the tailgate. The farmer lifted it down in his powerful arms and left it in Radar's competent care while he helped Arrietty down.

"I'll take Beauty back to her mother. Here. Take my flashlight to the kitchen, will ye?" He pointed in the direction of the door Sissy had slammed. "The missus will give ye some breakfast. Don't worry, now," he added, when Arrietty clutched the flashlight to her chest and sized up the kitchen door as though it were a fearsome opponent. "She's that kind, birds eat out of her hand. Go on, get something in your stomach."

He patted her shoulder and gave her a gentle push. Arrietty found herself walking, heart thumping against her ribcage, toward the kitchen door.


	9. Chapter 9

Warm air washed over her as she opened the door. She hadn't realized how cold she was until then. The hall wasn't lit, but light spilled into it from the kitchen. She could hear silverware clinking and a fire snapping. Something smelled good; cooking. A woman's shadow moved across the floor.

"There you are!" Sissy appeared out of nowhere, making Arrietty jump. "I told Mom to set an extra plate for breakfast. Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

She plunked the flashlight down on a shelf, whisked Arrietty around a corner and pushed her up a flight of stairs and down another hall, finally stopping in front of an open bedroom door. She held a hand up and measured; Arrietty was leggy as Human Beans went and was a good nine inches taller than Sissy was. "You won't fit my clothes," she mused, "but maybe... wait here!"

She started to run off to a different bedroom, then screeched to a halt. "No, no, I have a better idea." She took hold of Arrietty's shoulders and pushed her across the hall into a bathroom, flicked the light on, then scrambled across to the shower and turned the water on full blast.

"Throw those pajamas in the hamper," she shouted, over the roar of the tap. "I'll bring you something to wear, okay? Towels are here," and she yanked a cupboard open to show the stacks of folded white terrycloth. "Oh, and there's disinfectant in the medicine cupboard over the toilet." Then she locked the door from the inside and backed out, still clutching the edge of the door.

"I'll knock three times, okay? Let me in when I come back."

The door slammed before Arrietty could answer. Two bottles fell off the counter and rolled across the floor.

"Sissy!" someone yelled from downstairs. "Will you stop that!"

Arrietty licked her lips and held a finger under the water. It was _hot_, wonderfully blissfully hot. She hadn't bathed in hot water since leaving the Sadako house. Three seconds later the pajamas were in the hamper.

She was drying off when the door shook under Sissy's "knocks." They sounded more like hammer blows. She wrapped herself in the towel and opened the door.

"Here." Sissy blew in along with a gust of cold hallway air. "Look what I found!"

She held it up proudly by the straps. It was a pair of women's overalls. The cuffs were a little high on Arrietty ankles, but "They'll do," Sissy decided. She also had a pair of shoes - with something crinkly stuffed in one of them - under one arm and a frilly cream blouse slung over her shoulder. "These belonged to our milkmaid. She quit because she said the barn was haunted." Sissy giggled. "Fancy that! And I found a set of underwear I haven't used yet. You're pretty slim, and -" she eyed Arrietty's flat chest "-I don't think you're any bustier than I am, so they should fit."

She put the toilet lid down and dumped everything there. "So. Get dressed and come back down. Waffles are almost ready!"

Arrietty got her hands over her ears in time to block out the inevitable _slam._

The farmer was in the kitchen when Arrietty came down in her new blouse and overalls. That made Arrietty feel better about facing the new Human Bean, the woman.

"Well there!" The woman smiled and turned the gas range off to shake Arrietty's hand. Her eyelids flickered as she took in the band-aids on Arrietty's hands. "So you're the Good Samaritan who saved our little Beauty."

"Er... yeees." Arrietty stole a glance at Sissy, who was stuffing her face at the table. Sissy nodded fractionally and gave her a thumbs-up. Arrietty was starting to get a sense that Sissy was rather "artful" as Homily might say. She didn't even realize yet that Sissy had intentionally not let her mother see Arrietty in the dirty pajamas, or that Sissy had chosen overalls knowing her mother would assume that Arrietty worked at a nearby farm. The fact was that Sissy did not have many friends her age and was determined to keep Arrietty as long as she could; she knew she had a much better chance at this if her mother did not think Arrietty was a homeless runaway, as she and the farmer suspected she was. Children sometimes have a more realistic view of their mothers than their fathers do.

Arrietty didn't know what a Good Samaritan was, but she shook the lady's hand back. "Yes," she said more firmly. "I am. Pleased to meet you. I'm Arrietty."

"My name is Carol. Do sit down and have some waffles."

"And after breakfast, can I show her around the farm?" Sissy said eagerly.

"Well, dear, she may need to go back to work..."

"It's my day off," Arrietty heard herself say. Her ears burned, but her hair was still down from the shower and no one was the wiser.

"Oh, good!" Sissy jumped up and hauled her to the table. "Let's go egg-hunting. I've always wanted to go egg-hunting with another girl."

"Don't you see other girls at school?" her mother teased. She set a plate down in front of Arrietty; the farmer passed syrup, and Sissy slid a waffle onto her plate.

"Yes, but I don't like them," Sissy grumbled. "They think farming is stupid. Are you good at hunting eggs, Arrietty?"

"Yes, quite," Arrietty said, and picked up her fork. It was true; robin's eggs, quail's eggs, even insect eggs - she'd done a lot of that since her family moved into the dugout burrow.

"Oh, good."


	10. Chapter 10

Thus began a morning unlike any other. Sissy showed Arrietty where Beauty and her mother came and ate with the other cows, at the feeding shed north of the farm yard. The cows were all out grazing by then, so there was nothing but mud and cowpies and prints and Sissy's horse. They fed the horse a carrot and were duly slobbered on. They went egg-hunting in the henhouse and the weed-choked yard behind it and got pecked, helped with chores in the kitchen, then went to the barn at Carol's request to find a pair of kittens she had promised a neighbor.

"Is this," Arrietty asked, "the barn that's haunted?"

They paused in the doorway, taking in the dim interior. It was a modest structure, but the high roof made it feel bigger than it was, and there was not much inside to make it feel smaller. Too many careless managers let barns become repositories of broken equipment or old cars; this barn, though, was clean and neat. Stanchions lined both walls; that was where the cows were milked. Towards the back Arrietty saw closets or sheds against the inside wall; these held medicine and equipment. The very back wall was mostly given over to large double doors that would open out on the pasture. As with many dairy herds, the cows did not need to be encouraged to come inside for milking, and would walk themselves right into the stanchions.

"Without the cows here, it's _so_ quiet. It does feel kind of haunted!" Sissy shuddered delightfully, but Arrietty was only wondering what the maid had seen.

"Is it _really_ haunted?" Arrietty asked matter-of-factly.

"It's _supposed_ to be."

"But have _you_ seen anything?"

"Oh, all right, so I haven't - it's just that things go missing sometimes. It's still fun to think about. Come on, the kittens are probably up in the hayloft."

"What _kinds_ of things?"

"Oh, just little things - nuts and bolts and spools of twine and chips of salt block and some of the sweet feed..."

Sissy darted to the right, up the stairs to the hayloft. There was a trapdoor at the top; she heaved it open, spilling the scent of hay and a square of reflected light down on the stairs. Arrietty, at the foot of the stairs, paused and knelt. Her sensitive fingers traced one of the balusters. The stairs were made of split wood that had been cured and then nailed together. She got a splinter for her troubles, but...

Sissy poked her head over the edge of the trapdoor. "What are you waiting for?"

"Just a second." Arrietty could be artful herself when the occasion demanded it. "Got a splinter."

"Oh." Sissy disappeared.

Arrietty picked the splinter out and leaned in to get a good hard look at the right-hand newel, the post at the bottom that supported the handrail. As she'd thought; a knothole. She touched it, ever so lightly. It gave under her band-aided fingers. It was five inches off the ground; an easy reach for an adult Borrower.

"Hmm," she said aloud. "These splinters are nasty."

Meanwhile, she pulled the tail of the blouse up through the yoke of the overalls and wrenched off one of the pearl buttons. She took the one from the bottom, so it wouldn't show, and tucked the blouse back in. Then she dropped the button by the newel as she stood up. She felt a little bad about damaging the blouse but, she reminded herself, it had already been Borrowed once and didn't really belong to anyone now.

"Here I come," she called loudly, and stomped up the stairs.

X X X

The hayloft, too, had a high ceiling and double doors toward the pasture, but these doors were for throwing fodder out, and they were shut right now. Still, sunlight spilled in through the cracks in the walls, and the whole space was suffused with a golden glow because of the clean, sweet, reflective hay.

The kittens were indeed in the hayloft, but they half wild and weren't interested in being caught once they realized that the girls had no food. It took a flour sack, two sardines from the kitchen, and a great deal of patience and coaxing before they were finally able to scoop up two squirming furballs.

"Come on, you guys," Sissy griped, when one of them scratched her through her shirt sleeve. "You'll be a lot happier in a house where some suburbanite will have nothing to do but spoil you."

Arrietty worked out a careful compromise with "her" kitten as she carried it toward the trap door. She would keep it comfortably tucked against her chest, and it would purr spiritedly and try to bap her on the nose - but that, she figured, was better than getting scratched.

Arrietty waited while Sissy tried to pry the trap door up with one hand - she had shut it while they hunted kittens so neither of them would forget and fall down it accidentally - and balance her kitten with the other. That was when Arrietty heard it. Her name.

"Arrietty!"

It was a small voice, but gruff and deep all at the same time. Sissy was busy wrestling with the trap door and hadn't noticed. Arrietty glanced left and right, back, down...

"Arrietty!"

She knelt on the boards, holding the kitten firmly. A pile of straw parted in front of her.

"Spiller!"

"What?" Sissy said distractedly. Her kitten almost got away; she grabbed with both hands and caught it, but the trap door fell closed and she had to start all over again. "Oh bother!"

"Just talking to the kitten," Arrietty said lightly. "Shh, kitty, he's not good to eat."

The kitten was still interested in trying. He extended a curious paw Spiller's way; Arrietty intercepted, closing her fingers gently over the tiny claws. To Spiller, they were the size of fingers. She wondered if Niya would treat Spiller like a friend. Was Niya smart enough to recognize Borrowers as a category, even if he'd never been properly introduced to certain ones? "Spiller, how on earth did you get here? How did you get past the cats?"

Spiller, as usual, wasn't interested in giving her details. He marched across the straw, ignoring the kitten, and grabbed her big finger. He tugged. "Arrietty come home now."

So that was it. He must have seen; he might even have hitched a ride on the truck. She didn't see how else he could have gotten here so fast, even if he could practically fly. "I _can't!"_ she hissed. "Don't you understand? There's nothing for me to eat or wear, and if I go back people will see me by the dugout burrow and then -"

She was choking up. The kitten got one paw free and snagged Spiller's furry wrap. Arrietty gasped and quickly extracted the wayward paw. Spiller blinked stoically. No harm done. "Tell Mama and Father -"

"Did he scratch you?" Sissy called.

"No," Arrietty said hastily. Her back was toward Sissy, blocking Spiller from view. "Well yes, but not bad."

"Come on then. I finally got it open." Sissy dropped the trap door on the floor, making Spiller wobble when the floorboards vibrated, and started backing carefully down the stairs.

"'Kay." Arrietty made a show of gathering up the kitten. Under her breath she said, "There are Borrowers here, in this barn. I think. Tell Mama; tell Father. Maybe this is a better place to live for them. Maybe -"

"Know that," Spiller grumbled. "Cats tame."

"Eh? You mean the Borrowers have tamed the cats here?"

"She's coming," she heard Sissy calling out from downstairs.

"I'll come back - when I can!" Arrietty scrambled for the trap door. She didn't want Sissy to come back up and spot Spiller. "Be careful!"

Spiller was so small, so very small and vulnerable. Even if the cats in the barn _were_ Borrower-tame - and the kitten had seemed more curious than predatory - still...

She suddenly ached with fear for him, for her parents. Her breath came shorter. It was such a big, hostile world out there...

She hardly noticed - though she did - that the button was gone.

Carol was waiting for them by the front door of the farm house. "Good timing," she panted; she'd jogged through the house and was out of breath. She scooped the kittens out of their arms. "I'll take care of these. Sissy, you and Arrietty go fetch three quarts from this morning's milking - raw milk, y'hear? I have a customer out front and my knees are bothering me. Take it to her."

"Sure." Sissy had done this many times before. She grabbed Arrietty's hand and pulled her into the house, into the kitchen, then opened a door Arrietty hadn't noticed before and plunged down a flight of stairs into the cellar.

"Ma has a touch of arthritis," she explained over her shoulder. "It hurts if she goes up and down the stairs too much."

"Oh." Arrietty followed as Sissy hopped off the bottom step into a dark space and groped along the wall for a light switch.

"Here we are. Help me."

Arrietty got beside her and helped pry up the lid to an old-fashioned stone cooler. Then she held the lid while Sissy plunged her arms up to the elbows in the ice-cold water and fished out three quart jars.

"This is nice," Sissy remarked. "Usually I have to move the lid, _then_ get the jars, then put them _down,_ then move the lid _again,_ _then_ pick up the jars... I'm glad you're here."

Arrietty couldn't stop the warm glow that spread across her chest and crept up her face into a smile. "Me too," she said softly.

She wasn't so glad when Sissy said "Here" and gave her one of the jars. Arrietty hissed. It was _incredibly_ cold.

"Good milk is a delicate product, like wine or - or something," Sissy said, handing her the next two. "It needs to be chilled quickly and kept cold to retain its flavor. Hurts against your skin though, doesn't it? I think that's the other reason Ma sends me down here to get it."

At least Sissy took two of the jars back once she'd closed the cooler. "Try not to trip," she said, and led the way back up the stairs.

"Have you ever tripped?"

"The customers wait outside the kitchen door," Sissy said, pretending not to hear.

Hmm.

Instead of morning's soft red hues, the gravel reflected the heat of the noonday sun. The farmer's truck was gone now, along with the farmer. In its place hummed a smaller vehicle. An elderly woman stepped out of the driver's seat. She had a picnic cooler in her hand.

"Thank you, dears," she said, and set the cooler down. She took the jars from Sissy, one by one, and put them in the cooler; it was half full of ice, and the jars went down with an almost musical crackling-squelching sound. "I heard this was good for someone who'd been hit hard by antibiotics. How much do I owe you?"

As the lady opened her purse, she stepped to one side to get around the cooler. Arrietty gasped. There was a passenger. He was looking tiredly out the window, chin propped on his wrist.

"Sho."


	11. Chapter 11

He turned at the sound of his name. Time stopped while they stared at each other.

"Arrietty?"

The next thing she knew, the passenger door was wide open and he was in her arms. Afterward, she could never remember whether he ran all the way around the hood or scrambled over it. Great-Aunt Sadako - it must be her - stared in shock as her great-nephew embraced a total stranger, laughing and crying and talking at the same time. It was a good thing Arrietty wasn't holding any milk. Sadako worried whether all that jostling was good for him. Still, there was no mistaking the look on Sho's face -

Pure joy.

Sadako had been worried about him. The operation had been risky at best, and the doctors had done a lot of frowning and head-shaking before, during and afterward. But Sho had pulled through. With a will that seemed alien to his frail body, he had fought back a postoperative infection that had kept him in the hospital weeks after he should have been released. Sadako had visited him as often as she could. She usually found him staring out the window of his hospital room, chin set, brow drawn, book face down on the covers of his bed. He would come out of his reverie and look at her with eyes that were far too serious for a twelve-year-old. There was always a cluster of little packages on his nightstand. His uphill battle for life - and, to be sure, his sweet manner and delicate good looks - had won him the support of the nurses, and they brought him a steady supply of treats and presents.

After he was released, he continued to struggle with the side effects of the powerful antibiotics the doctors had had to use against the infection. He stayed with Sadako because the hospital insisted that he needed to be watched constantly, and his parents, as usual, had no time for an invalid. Haru the housemaid was better than no one for those times when Sadako had to be out, despite the polite hostility that had inexplicably developed between her and Sho.

Sho had been steadfast in his determination to live and get better, even during nights when he woke up vomiting or with a fever. But he had stopped smiling. Sadako knew he was weary of being indoors all the time, so she took him driving when she could. Today, a short trip through the country on a lovely summer day had seemed the perfect outing, especially when she had an errand to run out this way anyway. But she seemed to have found something much better for Sho than raw milk!

"Um..."

Sho and the leggy girl finally let go of each other, out of breath. Sho wobbled; the leggy girl supported him with a quick arm under his shoulders. They both looked at Sadako with half-fearful, half-laughing eyes and started talking at the same time.

"This is-"

"I'm -"

"Oh, sorry. Let me finish. Auntie, let me introduce -"

"I can say my own name!"

"Shh, that's not how it's done!"

Finally Sho clapped his hand over Arrietty's mouth. The fact that she was two years older and quite a bit taller than him made this an effort. "Auntie, this is my very good friend Arrietty," he said all in a rush, before Arrietty could pry his hand loose. "I didn't know she was going to be here!"

"Oh, my." Sadako fluttered with delight. Sho actually had color in his cheeks. "I didn't know you had any - I mean, err, I'm so happy to meet a friend of yours, Sho."

"Pleased to meet you," Arrietty stammered, now that Sho had removed his hand.

"And I'm Sissy," Sissy interjected, edging closer. She was looking Sho over admiringly. Arrietty shot her a calculating glance and laid a casual but proprietary hand on Sho's arm. Artful or not, Sissy was _not_ Borrowing Sho.

"Yes, I met Sissy just this morning," she said pointedly, but with a smile. Sissy pouted.

"Arrietty dear, do you live here?"

"No," Sho and Arrietty said together, then "You don't, do you?" Sho asked Arrietty, and "I'm just visiting," Arrietty said to both of them. "I'll be - er - going home soon."

Sadako tapped her fingertips together. Sho. Smiling. Happy. "Arrietty, do you think your parents would mind terribly if I borrowed you for the evening?"

Arrietty stared. "How do you know about Borrowing?"

"Well, it's what people do when they want something, isn't it?" Sadako smiled in the way that crinkled all her smile lines and made her look especially nice. "I'll give you a ride home to make it up to them."

"I don't think they'd mind," Arrietty said slowly. Really, what difference did it make to her parents whether she was here or at Sadako's. And, either way, she realized with a little tinge of guilt, they couldn't exactly stop her. But she should let them know where she was going. At least, she should try. "Can I run and get something from the barn?"

"Is your family there?" Sho asked under his breath.

"No," she said shortly. "Later."

"Of course, dear." Sadako picked up the cooler and motioned for Sho to open the trunk. "We'll be here waiting for you."

"I'll be right back," Arrietty promised Sho, and tore off to the barn. She flew up the stairs, struggled with the trapdoor - then remembered what she was about and opened it slowly, carefully, lest she crush Spiller if he were nearby. "SPILLER!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Silence; but he had to be here. The silence had a sulking quality to it, not the emptiness of real solitude.

"Spiller, I know you're up here. Listen, I'm going to Great-Aunt Sadako's. It's the house where we used to live - before. You know. I'll be safe there for now. Tell Mama and Father, please. I'll come back when I can. Bye!"

She eased the trap door back down and ran back down the stairs. Sho, already anxious that she might have vanished into thin air, brightened when she reappeared. This was not lost on Sadako.

"Arrietty!" A door slammed. It was Sissy, with Arrietty's pajamas. They were clean and neatly folded.

"Oh." Arrietty took them, then hugged Sissy contritely, sorry that she had been so quick to view her as competition. "That's so nice of you. Thank you."

"No problem." Sissy hugged her back and decided not to mention that she had washed them because she simply hadn't wanted her mother to see the dirty pajamas and ask where they'd come from. Nor did she mention that her mother had been dropping hints about sending her visitor home for the last two hours. Sissy hadn't given up on having Arrietty over again. And maybe that good-looking friend of hers, too. "You'll visit, won't you?"

"As soon as I can," Arrietty promised.

"Oh, good." And Sissy stood and waved as the Mercedes pulled out of the farm yard. Then she ran into the house and slammed the door so hard that the windows rattled.

"Sissy!" Carol's yell drifted after them, audible even through the door. "Will you stop that!"


	12. Chapter 12

Arrietty breathed a little easier once the car was on the road. She hadn't even known how to get into the car; all she had to go on was the farmer working his door handles this morning, and it had been dark. But Sho had seen her hesitate. "Let me," he'd said, and opened the back door for her.

"Such a gentleman," Sadako had commented, pleased.

Sho had motioned her into the middle of the seat - "So I can still see you," he said, and watched to make sure she could find her seatbelt. Then he slid into the front seat and silently demonstrated how to latch the two ends. The bones on his hands were visible while he did so, too visible. His hands trembled.

"Sho, you don't look so good." The genuine concern in her voice earned her immediate credit with Sadako. Arrietty didn't know that. She was simply worried about him.

"He hasn't been able to keep his food down," Sadako fretted. Then she tried to brighten up. "So where do you live, Arrietty?"

Sadako's question made Arrietty really want to hide. Sho spoke up sweetly. "Weren't you moving last time we talked?" He twisted around in his chair to hang over the back as well as he could without being choked by the seat belt. "That's when I told you about my operation, remember?"

"Stop that, Sho, I'm going to get a ticket."

"That's true - we were -" Arrietty's eyes fell on his shirt pocket, the one covering his heart. "The operation - did it work?"

Sadako slowed down to navigate a turn, and Arrietty stared. They were among houses - clusters of houses, streets of houses, stack upon stack and row upon row. And there were people - Human Beans - everywhere. She wanted to run and hide, but there was no point; she was as big as they were, now, and they didn't give her a second glance. Vehicles, bicycles, people on foot, buses, children - Arrietty had never seen small children before, not anybody younger than Sho -

"It worked. My heart is fine now. It's the rest of me that's in shambles." Sho glanced back at her, and she saw from the smug expression on his face that he was enjoying her shock. She stopped shrinking back into her seat and shot him a dirty look, but his smile only grew wider.

"Did he tell you about the infection?" Sadako was completely unaware of the double conversation going on behind her back. "It's been awful, poor child! I thought we were going to lose him..."

Sadako launched into an energetic retelling of the whole ordeal, with the relief of someone reliving painful details. Sho's mother had found time to visit once - _once_ - and his father hadn't come at all. Arrietty twisted her overall pant leg between her fingers, embarrassed for Sho while Sadako criticized his parents so openly, but from the bland look on what Arrietty could see of his face, Sho was used to this.

On it went. Sho had been in and out of the hospital three times since his official release due to relapses and complications with the side effects of the antiobiotics. He had gone for a checkup just yesterday and the doctor had been concerned enough to have him held overnight for observation. "I'm - sorry to hear that," Arrietty said haltingly at timely intervals, though she wasn't sure what antibiotics were.

"Don't be," Sho said lightly. "It got me out of school for the rest of the year." He reached back and patted her knee. His hands were thin, but his smile was luminous. "So I got to see you today."

"Yes; thankfully, his mother found time to sign _that_." Sadako braked hard for three teenagers who had skateboarded into the street without looking for cars first. Arrietty was thrown forward - whoever had used the seat belt last had been a lot bigger than she was - but she caught herself against the front seats. Sho chuckled, and she fought the urge to smack him on the back of the head. After all, he was sick.

"Really, kids these days!" Sadako tapped the horn. "I hope the milk is all right."

"You really think it will help?" Sho asked skeptically. "I mean, _'raw'_ milk. It doesn't sound appetizing."

"It's worth trying. Why, my friend Jennifer..."

Sho's real purpose was to keep Sadako from asking too many questions about Arrietty's family, where she lived, what her parents did. It worked. Sadako kept talking until the car had passed the suburbs, a gate, and a long driveway. Arrietty felt better without so many Human Beans around, but...

"Not again!" Great-Aunt Sadako stopped the car; a red vehicle, smaller than hers, was blocking the driveway. "Hang on a moment, you two - I'll get Haru to move her car."

She shifted into park, turned the engine off and got out. Arrietty's breath was coming faster and harsher, and drowned out the sound of Sadako's shoes scuffing away down the driveway.

"Arrietty." Sho took off his seat belt and came around to help her out of the car. He held the door open and waited patiently while she fumbled with her seat belt. "It's all right. Haru can't hurt you now. You're not a helpless Borrower anymore."

"I'm still a Borrower," she shot back, and stepped on his foot as she got out of the car. "And I was never helpless!"

It would have been most satisfying to stomp off, but she had to stop after three steps because she didn't know where to go. Her hair whipped this way and that as she looked around, disoriented. She might have lived somewhere here all her life, but... _nothing_ was familiar; she had never been out as far as the driveway, not once.

Sho, limping and laughing, came up beside her and opened the garden gate.

"Thank you," she huffed, and stomped up the path. Sho, still laughing, followed.


	13. Chapter 13

She _had_ been helpless, once. The memory burned. So helpless, she ran to the one person she was never supposed to see again. She wiped an angry tear from her eye. She wasn't really mad at Sho; she was mad at herself for being afraid, at Sho for noticing. But the anger-as-fear had braced her. She slowed, her borrowed shoes dragging in the grass, and stopped, head down, drawing slow breaths, calming her heart. She closed her eyes. Birdsong. The birds were the same.

She opened her eyes, hearing Sho come up behind her. "I'm sorry I stepped on your foot," she said sullenly.

"It's okay." He stepped past her, his sleeve skimming her elbow. "I'm so happy you're here, I can't feel any pain."

She looked at him, startled as always when he talked like that. He just smiled, hiding nothing. It wasn't the angelic look he used on adults to get his way. Her cheeks burned.

Furry warmth brushed her ankles. She caught her breath and looked down, thinking for an instant that a caterpillar had curled around her legs. It was Niya, fuzzy and white and blue. He butted her foot, scraped his body against her overall cuff, and turned around for another go.

"Niya!" She reached down and scooped him up, carefully, remembering how Sho had done it. His body was soft and liquidy, not like a rolly-polly's at all. "You remember me?"

"Like this." Sho moved her hand so her forearm supported Niya's belly and her palm was under his chest. "He likes that."

Niya agreed with a loud _meow_, then buried his face in Arrietty's underarm. She felt his throat vibrating.

"Is he okay?"

"He's purring." Sho slid his hand over her fingers, into Niya's thick throat fur. "It means he's happy."

"Oh." And Arrietty stood there, eyes wide, cradling a mammal for the first time. (The kitten had been so uncooperative that, she decided, it didn't count.) The birds called. A fleck of red drifted past her face, and she realized that it was a ladybug - but oh, so tiny, so tiny.

And like that, everything around her suddenly came into focus. She knew where she was. There was the garden; vast, exotic, distant, forbidden. The white picket fence, like the border of a country. The summerhouse; she knew that, if she went, she would find the remains of her family's camp behind the cracked foundation board. The stepping stones, which she had so often seen and so often avoided because they exposed her to ravens and to Niya, who hadn't been so friendly in the past. The rock where Sho liked to lie in the sun and read. The gazebo. And behind her...

She turned. There it was; _her_ grate, her window to the outside world. And the others. They jumped out at her, enormous, and for an instant she was pressed between the bars, looking yearningly at the sky with the scent of old dirt and cold damp behind her.

The rest of the house fell in around the grates. There were the kitchen steps, grey and familiar. Ivy, shelter and color and umbrella on rainy days. The French doors; they were open to the day, the beautiful day. She saw the hall, and the closet - _the_ closet, the one that had once sheltered her tiny world.

She looked up. There it was - that wide and terrible roof, a hot blue Sahara with ivy jungles. Sho's window with its bright new screen. The spare room with one broken and boarded windowpane. She had seen the insides of those rooms, in snatches. She'd seen the kitchen, the living room, the hallway between, for a few seconds at best.

The rest of the house was a mystery to her. It made no difference that she'd lived under it for fourteen years. She knew nothing about most of it.

It had been different at the farm. There, as far as her body knew, she'd simply wandered onto a Borrower-sized farm with miniature cows and cats (complete with miniature Borrowers ?la Spiller). She'd had nothing to compare it to. But here...

A harsh, grating sound broke her reverie. A crow. Niya meowed in complaint, and she realized that she was holding him too tightly. She eased her grip. "Sorry, Niya!"

Her eyes met Sho's, and she knew what he was thinking. Her eyes dropped to the palm of his hand.

"Sho!" Sadako's voice beckoned them. "Harriet? Where have you gone to?"

"It's 'Arrietty,'" Arrietty muttered. The spell was broken. She was still mad at Sho, or so she told herself.

Sho commandeered Niya for a cuddle, then set him in the grass and waved Arrietty toward the house. Niya trailed behind them, his short tail flicking back and forth. "She'll get it eventually. You have to admit, it's a harder name than Sho."


	14. Chapter 14

Sadako was at the entrance, one hand on a support post, peering around for them with a hand up to shade her eyes from the sun. "There you are. Come on in, Harriet."

"Arrietty, Aunt Sadako, Arrietty."

"Oh, dear me. Is it Arrietty? Of course I meant Arrietty. Come on it."

Arrietty copied Sho, slipping off her shoes in the step-up area just beyond the door and putting on the house shoes he handed her. She tripped over the step, gaping up at the high ceiling above and the lovely three-paneled stained glass window over the door. Sho caught her elbow.

"I hope you can make yourself comfortable here," Sadako was saying. Once again, she missed what was going on behind her. "I'll have Haru make you up a cot in the spare room in case you want to lie down. It's hot today, isn't it?" And she wiped at her hairline, glad to be inside the cool house. "Haru! Haru!"

Arrietty gulped, expecting thunderous steps and perhaps a fee-fi-fo-fum. Instead, she heard an ordinary middle-aged voice, rather dry in quality.

"Coming, miss."

There was a shuffle of house slippers, and Haru appeared. Arrietty stared.

Haru wasn't one hundred feet tall. She was an older lady, on the short side, spry but a little stooped, with cropped hair and a face that was neither frightening nor benevolent.

Why, Arrietty realized, I'm _taller_ than she is.

Sho's elbow landed in her ribs, and she realized that Sadako had just introduced her. She sucked in a breath. "Pleased to meet you," she said hastily, and copied Haru's bow. A furry warmth around her ankles startled her at this point, ruining the tail end of her bow.

"Ahh!" Haru abandoned formalities and stumped forward menacingly. "You're not supposed to be inside!"

Arrietty shrank back, frightened in spite of herself, but Sho stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'll take him outside," he reassured Haru, and Arrietty realized that he was talking about Niya, who had slipped in after them while the door was open. He scooped the cat up.

"And I want you to sit and rest after that," Sadako ordered. "You've had a tiring day."

"Sure, Aunt Sadako." Sho tilted his head at Arrietty. "Come on, let's go to the back porch."

"I'll have Haru bring you out some iced tea," Sadako called after them.

"Can I have sandwiches too?"

"Of course, Sho." Haru looked annoyed, but with Sho himself more than the request. "What kind?"

Sho looked at Arrietty, who held her palms up. All she'd ever had to choose from was butter and cheese. Other things, with their lids and seals, were too dangerous to Borrow.

Sho decided for both of them. "Tuna, please?"

"Very well."

"And make sure he gets some raw milk," Sadako interjected. "It's in the car trunk, Haru."

Sho made a face. Haru saw and answered Sadako with something more like enthusiasm. "Right away, miss."

X X X

Sho led her through the foyer, into a hallway, and paused. "Want to see the kitchen?"

She was biting her knuckles, she realized. "Later," was all she could manage. He nodded, and they passed on into the richly furnished living room. She recognized the fireplace, and the view of the four sets of French doors, having seen them from this side - ever so briefly - from his shoulder. She could see so much more now... and so much less. She peeked down at the floor, wondering where her father's tunnels ran.

"Come on." Sho put Niya down and flopped in one of the wrought iron chairs by the table, panting. He looked tired, but not as frail as he had this morning, somehow. Not as... _see-through._ Niya, content to stay outside if Sho was with him, curled up under the table and went to sleep. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Arrietty said feelingly, after consulting her stomach. She was, but she'd been so tied in knots that she couldn't realize it earlier. "Are you?"

"Yes, actually." He wiped an arm over the table, clearing off a layer of dust and carelessly wiping it on his pants. "I hope I can keep it down."

"Is it so hard?" Arrietty couldn't imagine not being able to eat. A Borrower who couldn't eat, soon couldn't Borrow. Not to mention that her health had always been excellent.

"Some days more than others."

A door opened. Silverware clanked on a wooden tray. House slippers shuffled through the living room, closer and closer. Arrietty jumped up, heart in her throat, but found her hands pinned to the table.

"Sit down," Sho said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Her temper flared.

"Don't tell me what to do!"

"Oh." His brows lifted. "Are you _scared?"_

If looks could kill, hers would have burned off a few layers of skin.

"Prove it. Sit down."

She sat down and jerked her hands away. Haru came outside, carefully balancing a large tray. Even through the red haze over her vision, Arrietty had to admire the practiced way Haru brought the tray down to a soundless landing and handed out dishes and chopsticks and forks, set out glasses and poured without ever seeming to stop moving. An elegant porcelain jug of iced tea reigned from the middle; Arrietty got lost in the cobalt blue patterns of koi and water lilies. The sandwiches were cut into overstuffed quarters and arranged prettily on a plate along with sprigs of parsley, and there were crackers with the tea.

_"Raw_ milk for you, Sho," Haru said slyly. "Make sure you drink all of it." And she went away.

"Eh, raw milk." Sho swirled his glass with all the enthusiasm of a child taking cod liver oil. "I guess there's no getting out of it..."

Arrietty's anger fought with Arrietty's curiosity. As had been the case before, she found a way to combine them. "I bet it tastes awful."

Sho's smile was quicker than the flick of a minnow's tail; then he was so serious that she doubted what she'd seen. "Have you ever had milk?"

She blinked. "Never wanted it," she sniffed. Which was patently untrue. Milk was stored in tall closed containers, in the enormous and (to a Borrower) tightly sealed refrigerator. There was no way to get in and, worse, no way to get out if one did get in; Borrowing from glasses left out recently enough not to be soured was out of the question during the day, and by night time such leftover milk had usually found its way into Niya's dish or curdled in a most unappetizing manner. She had always wondered what it tasted like, if it didn't taste like butter or cheese.

Sho found an empty tea cup on the tray and poured the top off his glass. "Why not try it? I will if you will."

Arrietty sniffed the tea cup suspiciously, but the milk was too cold to give off much scent. So she narrowed her eyes and drank, daintily, small sips. Sho's gaze was daring her to make a face and she was determined not to, so she was unprepared for the deliciously creamy flavor. She forgot about Sho and drank it all, then looked longingly at the bottom of the empty tea cup.

"I can't decide if it's good or not," she said guardedly, after a minute, and held her cup out for a refill. "I need another taste."

Sho complied, his knuckles brushing hers, but she held up a hand when the tea cup was half full. His hands had been cold, even on this warm day, colder than her hands, colder than the table. "You too," she said. "You said you would."

"Oh, all right."

X X X

"Does it look different?"

"Well... a little." Arrietty shook her head. "No, a lot. A _lot_ different. But still... somehow the same."

The night air stirred her hair. She was hanging out the window, looking down across the roof, at the garden and pond beyond. Her pajamas showed pale under the quarter moon. The cot Haru had made up for her creaked under her bare feet.

She looked to the left, at Sho's window. It hadn't taken long for Sadako's invitation to translate into a request to stay the night. A little later she'd remembered to offer to call Arrietty's folks so they wouldn't worry, but Arrietty had told her that she already had. It was the closest thing to the truth Arriety had felt safe in offering. Sho had glanced at her sideways but waited til later for explanations... for everything.

She could feel the crowded spare room behind her. It made strange little noises as everything cooled and contracted after the heat of the day, and she could almost imagine the room was full of busy little Borrowers. But it wasn't. She was, as far as she knew, the only Borrower here right now.

Sho was hanging out his window too. It hadn't taken Arrietty long to figure out how to remove the screens, and Sho followed suit quickly. It was the kind of pleasant summer night that made you want to drink the air. Once in a while the ivy on the roof rustled under a touch of wind, and Sho's hair would glimmer and stir, but otherwise it was still. "Do you think Spiller took your message back?"

Arrietty blew in frustration. "I hope so. I do think he would have said something if there was anything bad going on back home, but it's hard to tell with him."

"I'll find a way to get you there tomorrow," Sho promised. "I'll asked Aunt Sadako if we can have a picnic. We can invite Sissy too. Then her folks won't mind us being in their fields."

Sho, too, could be artful. Arrietty lowered her voice. "What if Haru comes?"

"She won't." Sho was smug. "She's terrified of snakes. I'll tell her they're everywhere."

Arrietty giggled. "Poor Haru. I used to be scared of her, but now..."

She trailed off, remembering meeting the maid in the hall after she'd had a bath - more wondrous hot water - and changed into pajamas. Haru had had to look up at Arrietty, instead of the other way around.

"But now?" Sho prompted.

Arrietty shrugged, struggling to express the mix of compassion and relief she'd felt when she realized that Haru was just a bored old person who didn't feel important to anyone. "I... I can't be mad at her anymore. What she did was terrible, but I... I don't think she was _trying_ to be bad. I bet she thought she was looking out for Aunt Sadako, somehow. Trying to be a super good housekeeper."

"It's easy to be bad without trying," Sho said regretfully, and she knew he was thinking it was his fault that the Clocks had had to leave.

"Look, if you're going to think about it that way, you might as well go full tilt and blame _me._" She shook her head. "Anyway, I'm here now. Let's worry about what we're going to do after tomorrow - I can't stay here forever."

Sho wanted to argue, but knew she was right. Even if Sadako consented to her staying the rest of the summer - unlikely - eventually he would recover and have to go home. Arrietty might be Human Bean sized now, but the two of them were still children pitted against an adult world, a world in which big people made the rules. "If you were small again, I could take you with me..."

Silence. Then, softly, "I'm not sure I want to be small again," Arrietty said.

"Well well." He was smug. " So you like being a 'Human Bean' better than being a Borrower."

"Hey. I told you I'm still a Borrower." She leaned out of her window threateningly. "And I'm bigger than you now. Don't make me come over and clout you."

He laughed in the choked way people do when they're trying not to be loud but can't help themselves. "I dare you."

She switched tracks. "I'm not fighting with an invalid," she sniffed, and pulled her window half down.

"Hey, wait!" He forgot himself and raised his voice.

"Shh! Stupid!" But she opened her window again.

She was here for tonight, at least. He was determined to be happy. "Hey, do you think we could climb down on the roof and watch the stars?"

"Don't you dare! What if you fell off?"

X X X

Something woke her in the night. She lay there a moment, disoriented. It was dark. The moon had gone down. There was only starlight, and cold air spilling in under the partly open window. Crickets sang and buzzed outside, and she heard an owl call. She wondered if Spiller was out there tonight, hunting.

She heard it again, what she hadn't been conscious enough to recognize; a muffled cry. Sho.

She threw off her blankets and tiptoed through the overstuffed room, barking her shins on something large and heavy - probably the sculptured bust, she thought sourly. Finally she found the doorknob.

The only light in the hall was from the windows at the ends, and it wasn't much, but it was just a few steps to Sho's door. She eased the bolt in and out, not wanting to wake Sadako. Haru stayed in her apartment next to the garage when she wasn't housekeeping, so that wasn't a worry right now.

Sho was tossing in his blankets; she could hear that much. Arrietty groped forward and found the edge of the bed, not wanting to turn on the lights; Haru, if she were up, would be sure to see _that_ and ask questions tomorrow, and Arrietty didn't want to deal with that. She reached down and pinned his shoulder to the mattress, followed it down to his hand, folded his over in hers. The cords of his arm were tensed.

"Sho. It's a dream. Wake up..."

She could tell from his breathing that he had. "Arrietty?" he said weakly.

She eased herself into a perch on the edge of the mattress. "I'm here."

"Thank God." His arm went limp. "I dreamed that... something... _ate_ you, and it was all my fault..."

"Shh." Her maternal instincts stirred, and she brushed his bangs away from his forehead, stroke on gentle stroke, as her mother had done for her when she was little. "I'm here. I'm fine." Then, remembering what Sadako had said, "You're not going to throw up, are you?" If she had to find a bucket, the light had to come on, Haru or no Haru. The only bathroom was downstairs and she didn't think it would be a great idea to drag Sho all the way down there.

Sho laughed, quietly, but she could feel it. "No, I'm good."

She reached out and smoothed the blankets over him with her free hand, as best she could, then sat quietly, stroking his hand. His breathing softened and she thought he had fallen asleep until he spoke. "...All the time."

"What?" She leaned in to hear him.

"I have that dream all the time. I hope..." And he sighed. "I usually throw up afterwards. I hope it'll go away now."


	15. Chapter 15

When Arrietty came back from using the bathroom in the morning, her overalls were gone.

Her first panicked thought was that someone had Borrowed them. She looked all over the room in case they'd fallen in between some junk, but they weren't there. Her shoes were still tucked under the cut, but the socks were gone. Finally, reluctantly, she had to go back downstairs in her pajamas. She had peeked around corners and run the first time and so escaped detection, but now there was no avoiding it; Human Beans were going to see her in her night clothes.

Sadako met her on the landing with a bundle in her hands. "Here, Harriet. I had Haru come up and get your clothes for the wash. Would you like to borrow this dress for the day? It's a little old-fashioned - eh, and probably short on you - but, well, _I_ think it's cute."

Well, at least it had been Sadako and not Sho or - perish the thought - Haru. Arrietty ducked into her room and changed, leaving the pajamas neatly folded on the cot. When she came out, Sho's door was open.

"Good," she heard Sho saying. "I slept through the night."

She wondered if he remembered waking up and wasn't telling, or if he just didn't remember. Maybe it was better if he didn't.

"Hmm, and your temperature is improved. Well, good. Do you think you can eat today? Come down and have breakfast then. Hm? Harriet? Oh yes, she's up."

Then, "Oh, dear. Arrietty, Arrietty. Not Harriet. Of course."

Arrietty sighed. She had a feeling that 'Harriet' was going to stick. But at least she wasn't in her pajamas anymore. The dress was a nice coral color, with a wide scoop neckline and a white collar underneath. The sleeves came down to her elbows in old-fashioned ruffles. It was short around her ankles, like the overalls had been, but it was better than pajamas.

Sho came down to breakfast looking pale but happy.

"Did you sleep well?" Arrietty asked anxiously.

"Yes, I did." Sho slid into a chair across from Arrietty. Arrietty felt herself relax now that he was in the room. Sadako was nice, but Haru still made her nervous. She could let herself look around the room now. It was richly furnished, with nice cupboards full of pretty dishes and tables set with vases of flowers on doilies. To her left was a part of the room that jutted to the outside farther than the surrounding walls; this held three large windows over three sections of a window seat with a pleasant view of the garden. She could see the big rock where Sho liked to read in the sun. She wanted to eat there, but Haru had set out places on the big table, so that was where the food was going to be.

"What do you want to do today?" Sho asked eagerly, as Haru served breakfast.

"Nothing too exciting, all right Sho?" Sadako reminded him, but she was pleased at the new life in his voice. "You're still recovering."

"Then, can we go window shopping, Aunt Sadako?" he pleaded. "I bet Arrietty would have fun!"

Fun, bug's eyes. He just wanted to rub in how many Human Beans there were. Again.

"How nice of you, Sho," Sadako said. "Would you be interested, Arrietty...?"

"Yes," Arrietty heard herself say, then kicked herself at the sight of Sho's superior smile. She kicked him too, literally, under the table, but he saw it coming and pushed his chair back for an overdone yawn and stretch, so she missed.

"And I have some errands to run. It's settled then. Where would you like to go, Sho?"

"The mall," he said immediately. "We can see a lot without having to walk very far."

"Good idea, and you can get food too. All right, let's go after breakfast."

"After breakfast" turned out to mean after all the dishes had been cleared, Sho had had his blood pressure taken with a funny cufflike plastic device that went around his arm and squeezed rather hard (he was not a big fan of this, Arrietty saw, but submitted with as much good grace as he could be expected to muster), Haru had been given a list of things to do for the day while they were gone, Niya had been fed, and Sadako had sat down and made a list of what _she_ wanted to do in town. In short, by the time they were in the car, it was almost eleven.

"There will be a lunch rush soon," Sho grumbled, but Sadako was distracted by a group of schoolchildren out on a field trip and didn't hear him.

"Sho, when you get better, maybe you can go to regular school."

"Hmm." Sho was politely noncommittal. Arrietty, giving in to curiosity, crawled up the chair shoulder - with her hands - close to his ear.

"What's a lunch rush?" She imagined plates and forks and tea cups jumping up and dashing around in the kitchen, but surely that wasn't it.

"You have lunch, right? Borrowers do, I mean. Am I right?"

"Of course we have lunch."

"Right, with the three of you. But imagine if there were... say... a _hundred_ Borrowers, all living in the same place, and they all took lunch at once and wanted to eat in the same room."

She tried. It was hard. A hundred Borrowers? She had exactly four faces in her mind, four that were Borrowers. She tried to multiply that, but she simply couldn't fill in the gaps. Then she tried using Borrowers she'd only heard about, like her Great-Grandfather, instead of inventing personalities on the spot. That worked better. She imagined the other families who used to live in the Sadako house, and their cousins and aunts and uncles who had emigrated. What would it be like, if they were all together - visiting, eating, maybe Borrowing together?

The vision held together for a few splendid seconds, then crumbled. There weren't any other Borrowers, not nearby, not anymore. Maybe a few hiding in a barn and a few hiding in other houses. There were so few of them that they couldn't find each other any more.

Sho was still looking at her expectantly. She shook her head. "It's hard to picture," was all she would say.

He patted her arm. "Aw, don't worry. You'll see what I mean."

Arrietty held on for dear life while the car whizzed through an overpass, terrified lest the vehicle slide to the side and fall off, but she hid it well. Only her knuckles went white. Then they came to a place where all the roads ran together like a tangle in thread, and she was sure they would die, but Sadako nudged the wheel deftly this way and that and they made in through without a nick. Arrietty thought she must be the bravest Human Bean alive, but then Sho didn't seem fazed by all the hubbub either.

When they finally pulled into the mall parking lot, Arrietty was disappointed. It was a desert of asphalt with white lines and yellow lines painted on it and light posts sticking up like the masts of shipwrecks, stretching out so far it must be able to hold all the cars in the world. As for the mall, it was just a long, boxy concrete building that barely poked up out of the ground.

"This is the 'mall'?" she whispered to Sho, as he held the car door for her. "It looks like an upside down litter box. There aren't even any windows."

"Maybe not the kind you're expecting. But wait until we get inside."

She felt sweat trickling down under her ponytail as they walked, and walked, and walked. Sadako had parked as close to the building as she could for Sho's sake, but Sho had been right and many people had been ahead of them. Their cars were filling up the parking spaces next to the building in the way that the falling blocks in a Tetris game soon plug up the bottom. The heat of the sun was doubled on the asphalt. Other people, too, were parking and walking, parking and walking; people of all shapes and sizes and ages. When Arrietty veered off from the group because she was staring around so much, Sho took her arm and tucked his hand in her elbow so she could rubberneck as much as she wanted without walking into the back end of a car.

"Doing all right, Sho dear?"

"I'm fine, Aunt Sadako." And he smiled angelically. "Thanks for walking slow for me."

Sadako was not exactly the fastest walker in the world, being well on in years. She didn't mind slowing down for Sho in the least.

There were windows after all, of a sort, Arrietty saw when they got closer. The glass was so dark that they looked like black rectangles set into the concrete walls. There weren't many of them. And, in fact, she realized when one of them swung open and several people walked out, they weren't windows; they were doors, doors made of solid black glass.

Sho caught the door and held it open for her and Sadako. "The inside is a lot better than the outside," he assured Arrietty, when Sadako was a few feet ahead and couldn't hear them over the ambient noise that echoed off every wall and floor and ceiling panel inside. "This is an old building and they haven't refurbished the outside yet."

Inside, Sho had to take her elbow again. They had entered through a major clothing store, and she was shocked by the hundreds of garments hung everywhere. Colors, colors, and more colors - though there were whole sections of them that were solid black. When she said as much to Sho, he grinned. "Black is in style right now. Give it three months and it'll be something else."

Sadako led the way down an escalator to the lower level of the store. Arrietty stared some more. Now, they were among summer dresses. It was as though they were walking through rows of enormous flowers. Sadako paused to look at a rack of scarves, then turned to the children.

"Sho, I'm going to buy some tea next door. Then I'd like to run some errands in town. Why don't you meet me at the ice cream shop at two-thirty?"

After making sure her watch's time matched Sho's, Sadako stepped out into the mall walkway and was lost in the crowd.

Arrietty bit her lip. "How will we ever find her again?"

"I know where the ice cream shop is. She took me there after all the doctor visits - if I could keep anything down." Sho's mouth twisted at the memory. "Don't worry. It's not as hard to find people here as it looks."

Arrietty worried the ends of her fingers. "But there's so _many_ people," she murmured. Never, in her wildest imaginings, had she conceived of there being so many people in the world. This wasn't one hundred, nor two hundred, nor a thousand... it had to be more than that, many more.

Sho grinned at her, studied the ever thickening crowd, and took her hand. "We'd better stick together." He didn't want her getting separated and panicking, alone, here. She had no ID, no papers. Who knew what might happen to her.

Too soon, they were out of the clothing store and in the main body of the mall. Arrietty sucked in a breath. She hadn't realized, from outside, how enormous the building was; indeed, from outside, there was no way to tell, because most of it was underground. And she didn't realize that she had stopped until someone bumped into her from behind.

"Excuse us," she heard Sho say. He looked for openings in the crowd - it was getting packed with the lunch crowd, as he'd predicted - and slithered his way to a bench and some potted trees set near the glass railing, taking Arrietty with him.

"There," he said, and sank down on the bench. "Now you can see better."

She heard the catch in his breath. "Are you okay?"

He flapped a hand. "I'm fine. Just a little winded. I haven't walked that far for a long time. Go on, _look."_

She compromised and settled on the bench on her knees, so she could be next to him but still sit up and look over the railing. The world she saw there was as far removed from her Borrower childhood as the moons of Mars.

Down the center of the mall was open space bordered by more clear glass railings like the one she was hanging over. This was especially dizzying when she looked up, all the way up to the diamond-shaped skylights that made up the spine of the far away ceiling. There was a story above them; that was the ground floor. They were one level underground, and there was yet another level beneath that. The floors and walkways were made of creamy white tiles alternating with occasional black strips and patterns. Seating areas, storefronts, billboards, merchant booths, a food court, entire _trees_ in planters; she didn't know the words for all these, but still her instincts gave her a sense of what they must be. After all, Borrowers were good at figuring out what things could be used for. It was a little overwhelming, to go from a three-person village to knowing a few Human Beans to walking into a sea of moving bodies. She hadn't known there were that many arms and legs in the whole of creation. She could see people from the side on this level, but on the bottom two it was mostly shoulders and the tops of people's heads. It wasn't the scale of the place that amazed her - there were plunging canyons aplenty for Borrowers between the walls of Human Bean houses - but the fineness. No protruding nails, no dirt, no sawdust; no _rats._

"You know what I think?" Sho had caught his breath and felt better.

"No." Arrietty was startled out of her reverie. "What?"

"I think we should buy you some clothes."

"Buy? But... I don't have any money." She might not have it, but she knew what it was. Human Beans didn't give things away for free, except maybe Sissy and Sho, and she wasn't too sure about Sissy.

"That's all right." Sho winked. Unbeknownst to anyone, he had gone suitcase diving early this morning and found his wallet. It was fat. One good thing about divorced working parents who never visited was that they tended to send large allowances. "You can Borrow some of mine."


	16. Chapter 16

"I don't know anything about shopping." Arrietty looked back through the store entrance, at the rows upon rows of choices in all shapes and sizes. "I have no idea what to..."

"It's not that different from Borrowing, really." Sho leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He looked better already. "You find what you want and take it home. The difference is that you have to pay, with the tradeoff being that no one is trying to catch or kill you."

"Mmm..." Arrietty shook her head, not so much refusing Sho as shutting down from all the choices and rocking herself like a small child might. Sho, who knew all about being overwhelmed, sensed the difference.

"We won't go to Macy's. Let's go to that store instead."

She followed the direction of his point. The store was smaller, with less things in the windows and fewer racks. Also, not so many of the clothes were black, and the interior was done in warm yellows instead of stark white and black. It didn't seem too crowded; at least, she could only see three people from here, and two of them were sales girls in uniform.

"Okay," she said cautiously. "We can just look, right...?"

"That's the spirit."

The salesgirls spotted them as soon as they entered the store. Both closed in on them, but the shorter girl was more determined and better at walking fast without making it _look_ like she was almost running. Arrietty wanted to cringe back against a dark corner somewhere - she certainly had been Seen - but Sho, without seeming to notice, had taken a firm hold of her wrist.

"Hi! I'm Cindy," the salesgirl gushed, smiling. "Can I help you find anything?"

"Hello." Sho took the lead, smiling angelically. Cindy, who was probably twice his age, actually colored. "We need new clothes for my friend," Sho went on. "A whole wardrobe, really. She lost her home in last year's disaster."

"Ohhh, that's terrible." Cindy was all sympathy. "And how sweet of you." Turning to Arrietty, "What size are you, dear?"

"Ahh..." It took all the willpower Arrietty had not to look helplessly at Sho. The way Cindy asked made it clear that every girl knew her size. "Well..."

Sho cut in smoothly. "What would you say, miss Cindy? She's grown a lot in the last couple months, so I think she's gone up at least one size."

"Now, talking like that won't earn you any brownie points with her!" Cindy giggled. "But I'd say she's a tall six or seven."

"Could you help us find two or three outfits in that range so she could try them on? I'm not sure what colors suit her - maybe you can recommend something...?"

"Of course I can." Cindy took a calculating look at Arrietty's skin and hair, flexed her salesgirl fingers and made a beeline for a nearby rack. "Give me five minutes."

Soon Arrietty found herself standing in front of a row of small rooms in the back of the store with a pile of clothing in her arms. Each room was narrow but tall, and instead of doors they had dark curtains that reached to the ceiling. She pushed a curtain aside experimentally, and saw herself staring back out of a large mirror.

"It's the changing room," Sho said. Cindy had noticed him leaning against the wall and found him a rattan cushion to rest on. Some of the other, mostly female customers gave him odd looks as they came and went, but aside from a faint red in his cheeks Sho paid them no mind. "Go on, see how the clothes look on you."

Arrietty went through the curtains and let them fall closed behind her. There were hooks on either side of the changing room, so she hung up the new clothes on one side and put her Borrowed dress on the other. Then she tried each outfit on methodically, and inspected herself in the mirror before stepping out to see what Sho thought. Soon her cheeks were red too. She'd never had clothes that were so... _pretty_. The clerk had a good eye; most of the outfits fit, except for two dresses obviously cut for someone with a larger bust and a shirt that was, er, painfully tight. She didn't bother showing these to Sho.

By the time they left the store she had three dresses, four jeans, two skirts, six tops, two pairs of shoes, and a purse. When Sadako found them at the ice cream shop, they were sitting at a four-person table. Two of the seats were piled high with bags of clothing, and the ice cream shared the table with a box containing checkers from the toy store.

"Well, it looks to me like the _window_ fell out of _window shopping,"_ she observed good-naturedly.

"There was a sale." Sho smiled angelically. "We couldn't resist."

X X X

The driveway was blocked when they got home - and for once, it wasn't Haru's vehicle but a sleeker, bigger car, a black one. Sho's lashes flickered when he realized there was still a driver in the seat, quite a feat of observation through the mirror glass windows.

"Who on earth..." Sadako beeped her horn, irritated.

"It's Mother," Sho said quietly. "She's probably inside. That's her chauffeur."

"Oh, dear. I didn't know she was coming today..."

"She never calls." Sho took off his seat belt and got out, motioning for Arrietty to do the same. "And the chauffeur won't move until she tells him to."

"Well, I suppose it's a good thing Sakura wants to visit her child now and then." Sadako's tone was only slightly acidic.

Haru was waiting for them on the doorstep, wringing her hands. "Ah, there you are," she said in obvious relief as soon as she saw Sadako. "Mrs. Hanabi is... she wouldn't wait; I'm sorry, miss... she's in -"

"The living room?" Sadako finished for her, as Haru followed the group into the foyer. "Very well, I'll be there soon. Here, put this tea away for me, please. Sho, why don't you wash your face and come in a few minutes."

"Sure, Aunt Sadako." Sho handed his half of the packages to Arrietty. "Here, Arrietty - I'll help you find a place to hang these up in the spare room. "

A package - socks wrapped in tissue paper - tottered and fell. They both grabbed for it, caught it, hands covering hands, while other bags and boxes tumbled to the floor. Arrietty couldn't help laughing. Sho smiled too.

It was in that moment, when their hands were touching and their smiles were warm with the memories of the day, that Mrs. Hanabi grew impatient and came into the foyer. The overly wide smile on her face froze in place.

"Why, hello, Sho," she said through her teeth. "I... didn't know you had a girlfriend."

She was a short, compact woman with a flawless pageboy cut and large dark eyes. Arrietty could see a little of Sho in her build and features, but her personality seemed, well, more...

"Hello, Mother," Sho pushed the boxes that had fallen nearest him into a neat pile and stood up. "Long time no see."

"That's a fine greeting after all this time!" She thrust her arms out. "Come give your momma a biiiig hug."

Sho sighed inaudibly and submitted.

"Now," Mrs. Hanabi said, too sweetly, "tell me all about your friend here."

"This is my good friend Arrietty. Arrietty, meet my mother."

"How do you do," Arrietty said politely, and bowed.

Mrs. Hanabi did not return the bow or acknowledge Arrietty. "You know I don't like you hanging about with kids on the street."

Sho's eyes narrowed. "You were overseas, Mother. For weeks. It was a little difficult to introduce you."

"Well." Mrs. Hanabi backed into the steps and sat down, fixing Arrietty with an expressionless gaze that did not make Arrietty feel very good. It was not just being _Seen,_ which had happened before, but being Seen with malicious intent. "I think you and I should have a long talk, Sho, about just what kind of behavior I expect from you as part of the Hanabi family and what kind of friends you should have."

"You can't take Arrietty away." Sho went pale, really pale, with rage. But he knew his limits - and played to them. He clutched his heart and went to his knees. It wasn't difficult to make his breathing sound harsh and labored. "Ahh..!"

Arrietty dove to the floor beside him. "Sho! Hang in there!"

"Oh, Sho!" Sadako, who'd been standing by awkwardly, came to life. "Haru! Haru!"

Haru came running.

"Take Sho up to his room," Sadako ordered. "Arrietty, see if you can calm him down."

"Of course, ma'am." Haru helped Sho - still moaning and groaning - to his feet, and Arrietty took his other arm and slung it over her shoulders.

Sho might not be Haru's favorite person, but she had no wish to see him expire on the floor. It would be a nightmare to disinfect, for one thing.

"Now, listen here, Sakura!" Arrietty heard Sadako begin, as they dragged Sho up the stairs and around the corner into the upper hall. Her tone was new, something Arrietty had never heard before, and she would believe Sho completely when he later talked about "Dragon" Sadako. The sharp, crisp voice followed them down the hall...

"You've been completely absent when Sho needed you most, and now you wonder why you don't know about his friends - it's a wonder he _has_ any friends, being shut up with tutors and doctors all his life! You didn't want anything to do with him before the operation, or while he had a postoperative infection - but now that I phoned and said he's better, you suddenly want to spend quality time with him and you're jealous because he has someone else. No, don't you dare interrupt me. I'll tell you straight - that girl has done him more good than six hundred thousand yen worth of medicine, and you've undone it all with one visit! Moreover, Sho may be your child, but Arrietty is a guest in _my_ home and I expect her to be treated as such...!"

The lecture cut off as Haru shut the bedroom door and wiped her brow. "My word," she said, and there was some excitement in her face at last. "It's almost as good as the time she caught the carpenter tearing out the cabinets in the kitchen instead of the ones in the garage. Come along, Sho, let's have you lay down."

For once the housekeeper and Arrietty were in complete agreement. Arrietty yanked back the covers and guided Sho's neck and shoulders down to a gentle landing; Haru drew the curtains.

"I'll just bring up half a glass of wine to calm him down," she said, but Arrietty knew from the gleam in her eye that she wanted to hear the rest of the quarrel.

"Oh, good," Sho said faintly, when she'd gone. "I get to have you all to myself."

"Are you going to be all right?" Arrietty took his hand and sat on the edge of the bed, on the side toward the window. "Please don't fret."

"It was the only way." Sho closed his eyes. "I'll be all right in a little while. She won't want me if she thinks I'm still unwell. I couldn't let her send you home."

"I wouldn't fit in 'home.' Not anymore."

"I guess Sadako won't say yes to a picnic today, after what I just did." He opened his eyes. "Sorry."

"It's all right." She patted his hand. It _was_ all right; the life of a Borrower was one thwarted plan after another, as she had had to learn the hard way. Today was nothing new. "I had a nice time at the mall."

"Oh! Your packages. You dropped them." He started to get up.

Arrietty pushed him down in a no-nonsense way. "It'll keep. Rest now."

X X X

She heard the two voices rising and falling, but with Sadako's always louder and firmer. She could hear them through the floor, through her feet. She couldn't hear the words, but Sadako did most of the talking. After a while Mrs. Hanabi started crying and ran out the door. No slam; she must have left it open behind her. Her car pulled out of the driveway and drove off smoothly. Of course; the chauffeur.

Haru came in no less than two seconds later with the wine, confirming Arrietty's suspicion that the housekeeper had been eavesdropping from the landing. "Here's the wine," she said, a little guiltily, but she looked flushed and pleased at all the hubbub. She lived for drama, after all, and Sadako didn't supply her with a great deal of it.

"I'll make him drink it." Arrietty set it on the night stand. Strange; now that Sho was unwell, her fear of Haru seemed unimportant. "Thank you."

She watched Haru leave. Sho closed his eyes and tried to pretend to be asleep, but Arrietty poked him in the ribs and made him take a few sips of wine.

"It's warm," he grumbled.

"That's because it's been on the tray for the last fifteen minutes."

The door clicked; Sadako. Her eyes were still snapping, but she was gentle when she spoke. "How is he?"

"I think he'll be okay." Arrietty set the wine back on the tray.

"Don't send Arrietty away," Sho begged, his eyes huge and tragic. Unshed tears quivered in pools. Arrietty shot him a look. He certainly knew how to play the martyr. His lip quivered, a twitch toward a smile, but he caught himself and used the motion to make himself look all the more piteous. He truly was pale, though, and she knew the fit hadn't done him any good.

"No one is sending anyone away," Sadako said firmly. She patted Sho's other hand, the one wrenching blanket fibers into a mass of tortured wrinkles. "So calm down, Sho dear. I had Haru put your packages in the spare room, Arrietty. And... when you're done here... I'd like a word with you, if I may."


	17. Chapter 17

Sadako smoothed her hands over her knees, worrying the fabric of her skirt as she and Arrietty looked at each other over the living room coffee table. She wasn't nervous, exactly - at her age, there was little she was afraid of - but there was a kind of fierceness in Arrietty's bearing now that made one consider one's words. The girl's dark eyes snapped and her hair was fluffed like an angry cat's or a mother hen's. Sadako didn't want to be misunderstood.

Upstairs, she heard the creak of a window sliding open. That Sho - he'd gotten out of bed. Sadako realized that the French doors, still open, were directly beneath Sho's window. Well, no matter.

"Listen, Arrietty, I know you haven't known me for very long, but I have a feeling that you're a trustworthy person, and after all these years I've learned to trust my feelings."

Sadako paused. Arrietty wasn't sure what was wanted of her, but she nodded and tried to look like she understood; at least Sadako wasn't calling her Harriet any more. This seemed to work, as Sadako brightened and went on. "I know you're happy to be around Sho out of the goodness of your heart, but I've just recently - ehm, _been authorized_ to hire a companion for him until he recovers fully, and I would like it to be you."

Arrietty stared. "You want to pay me? For being friends with Sho?"

"Not for _being_ friends with Sho," Sadako said quickly. "But for _staying_ here with him. With me. In this house. At least until school starts."

Arrietty found that she was tearing up. She'd thought that she was going to be sent away after all, in spite of what Sadako had said to calm Sho down. It wouldn't be the first time she'd been punished for being friends with Sho; it wouldn't be the first time she'd had to suffer not for doing wrong, but for making things _inconvenient_ for the people around her. "That's too good to be true."

Sadako, too, was dabbing at her eyes. "Now, now, sometimes good things _do_ happen, you know. Not often, maybe, but sometimes! Let this be one of those times, and maybe we can all be happy for a little while, hm?"

Everybody except her parents and Spiller. But Arrietty accepted those negatives quickly. They merely meant that Sadako's offer was real; there were always negatives to make you pay for the good in any situation. Last time, it had been Arrietty and Sho who had taken the brunt of that. Let someone else be unhappy this time.

"And one more thing, Arrietty," Sadako added with embarassment. "It's time to do something I've been putting off for decades. I _promise_ we'll clean up that room for you."

X X X

Sadako thought it would be better to tell Sho the good news in a day or two, after he'd had time to recover. Arrietty agreed readily as she was pretty sure that Sho had eavesdropped and knew everything anyway. She hugged the comfort of that thought to hersef; the thought that she wouldn't have to go, at least not for a few weeks yet. Borrowers did not look farther ahead than that. There was no point. It was unnecessary; it was unhelpful; everything could change in that amount of time. A few weeks was an eternity.

They made Sho stay in bed for the rest of the day; Sadako because she was worried about him, Arrietty partly because she worried and partly because she was mad at what he'd done to himself, and Haru because she didn't want him underfoot while she cleaned up (and looked for more little people, though she'd had no luck with that thus far).

So he was forced to read and recover while Arrietty hung up her clothes and Sadako poked through the spare room and said things like _donate_ and _garage sale_, and then Arrietty listened while he read out loud. He offered to read in Italian - it turned out he could read in one or two other languages - but Arrietty didn't see the point when she wouldn't understand. After he got bored of reading she brought up the game they had bought, and they played a few rounds and argued about the rules. He asked more about living under the house, and Arrietty told him about rats and cockaroaches in a whisper; his eyes went wide and he whispered back, so that Sadako smiled and pretended not to be there every time she passed his open door, though she popped in to scold when Sho got out of bed - over Arrietty's protests - to look at something on the wallpaper by the dollhouse. He jumped when Sadako spoke and crawled obediently back into bed.

How nice, Sadako thought, that he had someone to share secrets with at last.

Haru served dinner in his room, since Sadako wouldn't let him get up, and Arrietty ate with him because he fussed when she got up to go downstairs, so Haru had to serve her too and then grumbled about climbing up the stairs with an extra tray. But she did it.

Sho slept through the night. Arrietty slept lightly, listening for any disturbances, but there was nothing. Once, on her way back from the bathroom, she slipped into his room and stood by the door to listen to his breathing. Everything was dark except for the starlight, and she could see one of his hands relaxed across the cover, rounds spots of pale that were his knuckles, and the soft pale curve of his cheek against the dark indistinctness of his hair. His breathing was even; peaceful. He was fine.

X X X

She woke early, earlier than anyone else in the house. The sky out her window was gray with a kiss of pink; the pink was leaking in under the sills, licking the edges of the square of plywood in the broken pane. Birdsongs were starting up, as though the birds were rehearsing for the day. She lay on the cot for a moment, thinking that... she was back home, in her family's dugout burrow. For a moment she thought the touch of the wind in the trees was the rustle of her thistledown mattress, the pit-pit-pit of dew dripping from the eaves was her mother stirring a pot in the kitchen.

She pushed herself up, slowly, sitting back on her haunches, leaving the blankets to bunch around her feet and keep them warm. Her window was open a crack, the way she'd left it. The gray light outside showed her where all the junk in the room was, though dimly; she felt quite safe in dancing through to the door and padding over to check on Sho.

His window was down all the way, but the same rose-tinged grey light filtered through over everything. She smiled at the checker pieces helter-skelter all over the nightstand. What fun that had been.

The sun glinted through the trees in the garden, throwing red and pink and yellow everywhere; a tissue box, in particular, glowed, suffused with gold. Arrietty touched the tissue. It felt soft under her fingers, feathery. She remembered when it had been rough against her skin, wood fibers and pulp and clearish patches and opaque blobs. Now it was all an indistinct softness, and the pattern on the box was almost as fine as the lines in her skin.

She looked up, and there he was, just as he'd been that first night; only now the sun was throwing a gold haze over his hair, his skin, the reflections in his eyes. And she didn't have to be ashamed of being Seen.

"Morning." He smiled and stretched out a hand. She came around the table to touch his fingertips.

"Morning. How you feeling?"

"Better." He sat up slowly. "For a minute, I thought..."

"Hm?"

"Well, I thought I'd gone back in time." He tilted his head, embarrassed. "That it was the first time I'd seen you - really seen you, not just a glimpse - but it was morning instead of night and I thought maybe I hadn't done anything stupid so you wouldn't have to leave and then... well."

"I'm not going anywhere for a while."

"I know." He grinned. "I heard you and Sadako talking."

"Aw, you rat." But she wasn't surprised. She'd heard the window too. She ruffled his hair. "Are you hungry?"

His answer was interrupted by a knock downstairs. The front door, Arrietty thought. She held up a finger. Sho nodded and watched as she slipped out of the room and cocked his head to listen to the whispers of her footsteps as she crept down the stairwell. She'd lost none of her animal grace.

She stopped just short of the front landing and peered around the corner in time to see a sleepy, yawning Haru shuffle to the front door and open it. Haru had her day clothes on and was tying her apron strings as though she'd been putting it on on the way over from her apartment by the garage, but she obviously hadn't quite woken up yet.

"Good mor-_YAWN_-ning, how can I help y- AIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"

All Arrietty's hairs stood up at the sound of Haru's ear-piercing shriek. The door slammed so hard that the frame must have bent - Sissy would have been proud. Arrietty instinctively flattened herself against the landing wall as Haru went shrieking below her into the kitchen.

"That is IT! I have HAD IT with this house! First vermin then sick kids then the boss always on that brat's side then wild things and - and -"

Sadako appeared from the direction of her room in her bathrobe and slippers. She groped for a wall switch with a sleepy hand; Arrietty, seeing her, felt safe enough to come down. "My goodness, whatever's the matter?"

"I'm not sure," Arrietty stammered, but she had her suspicions, and edged to the front door. She didn't want Sadako to have a heart attack too.

Haru beat her to it, charging back from the laundry room with a basket of damp clothes - hers - that she had put in the washing machine last night. Arrietty shrank back against the wall lest she be dripped on or bludgeoned to death, and watched Haru stagger down over the shoes-off area step.

"I quit!" Haru announced and, forgetting herself, opened the front door again. "AIIIIIIII!"

She slammed it - again - and went scurrying out toward the living room, bumping Arrietty and Sadako aside. They heard a French door open and shut, and the fainter sound of Haru's car trunk opening and closing, and then the put-put-put of her car as she roared away.

Sho was hanging over the railing by now. Even in the faint light of dawn, he looked better than he had yesterday. His skin was flushed with excitement. "What happened? Did Haru just give notice?"

"I - I _think_ so," said a baffled Sadako. "I'll call her. She'll come back once she calms down. But I can't imagine why -"

Arrietty rather thought Haru had enjoyed making a scene and was in fact quite likely to come back, eventually, so she could make another. No matter. She marched down the shoes-off area and opened the door. There, as she'd suspected, stood Spiller, in all his nut-brown fuzzy glory. He blinked silently. Over his shoulder she saw a chunky farm horse that looked familiar, one she'd seen in a pasture perhaps. He was eating Sadako's pansies.

"That's what Ma did too," Sissy said, popping out from behind him. Her fair hair was half in, half out of a frizzy ponytail. "Only she didn't say she was quitting. You can't quit being a mom."

So it _is_ touch that does it, Arrietty thought frantically. She wondered what kind of dream Spiller had had.


	18. Chapter 18

"Is this a friend of yours, Arrietty?"

It was the third time Sadako had asked. She had been so unnerved by Spiller's appearance that she kept forgetting what Arrietty had said, or couldn't quite believe it, as though the thought kept slipping away between the tea cups and the saucers.

"Yes," Arrietty said stoutly, for the third time, though her ears burned. It was embarrassing, but she wasn't going to disown a fellow Borrower. "His name's Spiller."

"Aha, so this is Spiller." Sho and Spiller had already been eyeing one another in a way that worried Arrietty.

"He's my friend too," Sissy insisted, hopping in place. This was all the more impressive considering she was seated and holding a cup of tea. Spiller had refused to come inside, so Sadako had tied on an apron and served a light breakfast outside on the back porch; if she had any reservations about the two newcomers, the shine in Sho's eyes overcame them. They were all clustered around the table there. Spiller, it seemed, preferred an upturned bucket to a chair, but at least he'd accepted some food. "I found him in the loft this morning. My horse likes him."

"My _dear._" Sadako looked shocked. "Is he homeless? He doesn't _look_ like it... exactly... Arrietty, is he really a friend of yours?"

It was true; Spiller looked healthy and reasonably clean and smelled like hay and wild grass. Arrietty wondered if Sissy had thrown him in the shower, but no; he was wearing his own clothes, and Carol had reportedly refused to even open the door to him. At least, not after she'd slammed it in his face. Poor Spiller.

Sissy grabbed his elbow, making him drop a cracker; unfortunately for Spiller, she was sitting next to him. Niya left rubbing against Sho's ankle to pounce on the cracker. "He's not homeless - he's a traveler!"

"Er, you mean like a, ah, a cosplayer?" To her credit, Sadako was trying to cross the generational gap somehow. But it wasn't the only gap she had to contend with.

"No, he's not a cosplayer," Arrietty confessed, playing with her bacon. She knew this because she had seen cosplayers at the mall, at the ice cream shop, and Sho had explained - with limited success - what they were. Arrietty understood enough to know that Spiller was not one; he wasn't playing any role except his own. "He's always like this. Um, I think he lost his parents when he was little, but he doesn't talk about it."

"It doesn't look like he's adjusted too well," Sho remarked.

"I think he's done okay, considering..." Arrietty argued.

"He's right here, you know," Sissy huffed.

"Well, _you_ get him to explain himself then." Sho crossed his arms and sat back with a smug smile. It was an expression that, Arrietty was learning, made her want to pound his face in.

"He's the strong silent type," Sissy argued. Arrietty was busy grinding Sho's foot under the table.

"Spiller Spiller," Spiller said finally, and went back to his crackers.

"Sho, don't make funny faces while you eat. It's rude." Sadako began gathering up the breakfast dishes, smiling at the four younger people as they argued. It was good to see Sho so animated, so interested in what was going on around him for once. "I had no idea you had even - err, I mean, this - I mean, ah, _so_ many acquaintances." She stammered, then said something she immediately regretted, since there was no way of keeping it from becoming a blanket invitation. "You know what I think? I think we should have a picnic. It would be good for you."

And, Sadako thought guiltily, a picnic would at least get this strange person named Spiller off her porch, which would be good for Sadako. And for Haru, if she could be convinced to come back. Sadako would have called her cell phone, but Haru didn't have one.

Sissy couldn't help hearing. "Ohh, a picnic!" She jumped up so fast that her chair fell over. Niya yipped in surprise and shot off across the grass, a white and blue streak between the flowers. "I know _just_ the place."

X X X

"Mama?" Arrietty snuck a glance over her shoulder. So far, so good; Spiller was keeping Sissy occupied looking for blackberries by the stream, and Sho was making sure Sadako didn't look over this way. Not that she could see anything at this distance if she did, not without her glasses. Sissy's horse cropped grass near the blackberries, keeping one ear cocked on Sissy and the other on Sadako's basket of strawberries. The white and red striped picnic blanket seemed to jump out from the green, a concentration of unnatural colors among the grass and flowers.

The place hadn't changed. It was still a field with a blackberry-choked stream running through it, flowers popping up to spread their petals above the green pastureland, grasshoppers rasping away in hoarse dry arcs when you walked too close by, grass up to the knees (Human Bean knees), trees forming a wind break at the sides, one fence facing a faint trail that ran near a cow shed. Sissy had already been in and out of the cow shed three times, slamming the door until tar shingles peeled off the roof. Arrietty thought about the phone, the phone and the calf that had started all this trouble. She wondered if Beauty had been in this pasture lately. There were cow prints enough, so some herd or other had been grazing.

"Mama." Arrietty tried again. "Papa."

The grass rustled. Her heart leaped. Homily appeared first.

"Arrietty? Is that you? Oh, it is!"

She was so glad to see Arrietty that she actually ran forward and embraced Arriety's extended fingers, two at a time. She was as thin and active as ever. Her clothes, Arrietty thought, looked more worn; there was a patch on her left sleeve that hadn't been there before. "I'm so happy! We were afraid you were never coming back!"

"How could I do that?" Arrietty sniffed. She'd missed them.

Pod came after, with his slower, gentler smile. Though less expressive than Homily, he was just as glad to see Arrietty. "Welcome back," he said, and laid his hand on her thumb. "Are you all right? I see you have a new dress."

"Father," she said lightly, "you do realize that you're talking to a Human Bean, right?" And touching one, too.

"It doesn't matter how big you are. You're still a Borrower at heart."

"True, true." Arrietty's smile was so big that her cheeks hurt. "We came back to Borrow the pasture for a picnic."

"We?" Homily craned her neck, looking this way and that way. "You mean you and Spiller?"

"Ah yes... Spiller. About that." Arrietty's smile became plastic. "I'll, ah, send him over in a minute. But I want to talk to you first."

"What's there to talk about except THAT!" Homily wiped her eyes and pointed up, accusingly, at Arrietty's immense height. "Now, when are you going to stop this being big nonsense and really come home?"

Arrietty sighed. Now for the not so fun part. "Mama, I'm not sure I _want_ to stop being big, even if I can."

Homily's eyes went so wide that a raven, seeing the glistening whites, swung in for a closer look. Arrietty waved him away with an impatient hand.

"See, Mama? I don't have to be so... _afraid_ all the time. It's okay if I'm Seen. I've been Seen lots of times, just this week - and I'm still okay! Nobody caught me or put me in a jar, because I look like a Human Bean. I went to a store. I bought new clothes." With Sho's money. The details were unimportant, really.

Now Pod looked shocked. "But, Arrietty! We... we must survive! We need you to come back. What about Spiller? What's he going to do without you?"

Arrietty sighed again. Not that Spiller wasn't a fine person in his own way, but... "Father, have you thought that all the way through? Say we somehow survive the winter in this field - we can't, and you know that, and we'll have to move soon - but say we make it through all that and I did marry Spiller - which I'm not saying I will, but just suppose. Say we had children _and_ they didn't get eaten by frogs or ravens or cats or stepped on by a cow. Who would our children marry? Each other?"

Homily recoiled, shocked, but "I'm just being realistic," Arrietty said. It was a lot easier to argue with her parents when they were the size of her hand. "We have to survive, right? That means we have to be realistic. I have _choices_ this way. I like having choices. I like living out in the sun. And," she swallowed hard, "I like hot water and lights and electricity..."

"But Spiller said there are other Borrowers in the barn," Homily argued, recovering. "And something about sane cats."

"Tame. Tame cats. Yes, Mama, but I don't know how many or how old or _what_. It could be just two or three old people for all we know." She took a deep breath. "Father, hiding isn't working. It hasn't been working for a long time. I think you know that. Things are changing. There aren't enough Borrowers any more. There's no future in creeping around the edges and hiding in the shadows. If we keep on this way... there will _be_ no more Borrowers. Not for long. I'm sure of it."

And she would eat a lemon whole before she admitted any of that to Sho. He was so _annoying_ when he was right.

"But Arrietty, you're _not_ a Human Bean." Homily wrung her hands. "Don't they need papers, and cards and such, for everywhere they go and everything they do?"

"There was a tsunami last year, and a lot of people who survived lost everything - all their papers, too. Sho has a cousin who works for the government, and his job is to replace those papers. Sho thinks he might be able to slip me in." Arrietty's eyes shone. "I could have _papers,_ Mama. I could get a job. I could have a house of my _own,_ where I wouldn't _have_ to Borrow anything - it would all be mine!"

"Arrietty, dear, let's hear no more of this." Pod looked solemn. "Send Spiller over. I want to talk to him. We'll find a way to get you small again."

"Um... okay. I'll do that." She got up, slowly, so as not to scare Mama, and backed away carefully a few steps before turning around and making her way over to the picnic blanket and basket. She nodded to Sho, who got up and switched places with Spiller. Arrietty held out a napkin.

"Would you get this wet in the stream and bring it back for me, please, Spiller?" At the same time she tilted her head in the direction of the dugout burrow. "I'm so hot."

Not that he needed directions; he knew where her parents were better than she did. He'd brought them here to begin with, after all, that terrible time when they'd had to flee...

Spiller grunted, took the napkin and trudged off in the direction she'd indicated, grasshoppers scattering every which way under his feet. Not surprisingly, he had absolutely refused to get in the car, so Sissy had taken him on horseback, just as they'd come. He was still mad at Arrietty for not coming with, for she had traitorously excused herself on the grounds that the horse shouldn't have to carry triple. Secretly, she preferred the car. It was nice not to have bugs buzzing about one's face.

"He has a good heart, hasn't he," said Sadako generously, even while she breathed a sigh of relief as he walked away. She was trying.

"He does." Meanwhile, Arrietty counted silently. At fifteen, she heard her mother's piercing shriek. She hoped the shock hadn't made her faint. She felt bad, but honestly, how could she have prepared them?

"Oh, what was that?" Sadako stopped fishing for lemonade in the picnic basket and looked around. "I thought I heard... something. Like a cry."

"A bird, maybe!" Sho called from his spot in the blackberries. He and Sissy were well downstream of the dugout burrow. They were muddy up to their knees from slipping on the stream bank. It was the first time Sadako had seen him with dirt on his face, like a normal boy. The sight warmed her heart even as she shuddered for her carpets. "I heard it too."

"Oh yes." Arrietty closed her eyes and smiled. With solutions to most of tomorrow's problems rattling around in her head, she hadn't a care in the world. Next week was forever, too far away to think about right now. "It did sound like a bird."


	19. As Makes No Matter

"What's that?" Arrietty clutched Sho's sleeve and pointed, her finger stabbing one strange sight after another. "And that? And that?"

"Acrobat troupe. Magician doing tricks. A mime."

Arrietty paused. "What's a mime?"

"It's... uh..."Sho didn't know how to explain, so he sidetracked instead. "Hey, want some cotton candy?"

Arrietty shuddered. "Sweet and dry? Nasty!"

"How do you know?" Sho stopped walking and looked at her in surprise. "Have you Borrowed some before?"

"Er, no." She rubbed her ponytail, where the scrungie was starting to work its way into her scalp. It was too tight, but the hair clip she'd given Sho - seemed like years ago - was impossibly small for her now. "It was... well, I _thought_ it was a dream..."

Sho raised his eyebrows. "And hot dogs?" he ased leadingly.

"Yes!" She jumped. "Those are good!"

"We must have had the same dream, he remarked, and kept walking. "Let's get some hot dogs then." At least she had stopped asking about the mime. And hopefully it would get them out of the crowds, which still had a tendency to make her nervous.

Sho found a hot dog stand in short order. Soon Arrietty was holding a piping hot package in her hands. It oozed ketchup and relish. She didn't know which dressings she liked, so Sho had just ordered what he liked and hoped for the best.

"So," he said as he unwrapped his hot dog, "how did they take it?"

"Well..." Arrietty took her first bite and chewed meditatively. Ah, yes. It tasted wonderful, just like in the dream. "Mama is still hoping it's temporary, but I think Father knows better. They're already tired of the cowshed. I think I can talk them into looking for a Human Bean place soon. Spiller figures he can just bag bigger kinds of animals now - I don't know how long _that_ can go on without someone noticing, though he's awfully good at hiding out in the woods and such... but I know Father will need work, something to do with his hands."

"Are they mad at you?"

Arrietty laughed. "I would say they're too busy being... _confused._ They can't get used to not having to run and hide every time something moves."

Something glimmered at the edge of her vision. They were passing a funhouse. Sho glanced in and saw mirrors of every shape and size. "Want to go in the funhouse?" he offered.

Arrietty shook her head vigorously. "No!"

"So we _did_ have the same dream." He looked back at the funhouse as Arrietty dragged him away. "Aw, come on, Arrietty, it was just a dream. It's touching that does it, isn't it? Do we have to stay out of funhouses for the rest of our lives?"

"It's not worth the risk!" she shot back.

"Oh, all right." He patted her arm soothingly. "Let's see where Spiller and Sissy have got to."

X X X

"Arrietty! Arrietty!"

She woke up slowly. She remembered falling asleep on Sadako's settee, tired out from running around at the fair. She didn't remember Sho spreading a quilt over her, or Sadako quietly turning the light down so she wouldn't wake up. All she knew was that it was dark and she was hot and the settee was suddenly huge...

"Arrietty!" Again. And a pounding sound, like someone banging on the wall with their fists, but it was such a _tiny_ sound. She crawled to the edge of the settee, fighting her way through folds of quilt, and looked down. It was like being on the top of a cliff.

Sho was on the floor, banging on the settee leg. It was higher than his head.

"I'm coming," she called, and swung a leg over the edge. Her Borrower instincts hadn't gone anywhere. She made it to the floor easily and landed beside Sho, light as a feather. She almost _was_ light as a feather.

"You too, huh?" Sho brought a hand up and measured. Even as a Borrower, Arrietty was taller than he was. "You wouldn't believe how much trouble I had getting down the stairs..."

They looked around together, at the huge house. Niya trotted in from the kitchen, paused at the sight of them, and came over to sniff Sho and purr at Arrietty. Sho leaned on the huge furry head and stroked it absently.

"This," he said, "could be a problem."

**-the end**

_a/n: I no more own "The Borrowers" series or the Arrietty film than I can shoot Spiller's bow; otherwise, who knows what the movie would've looked like... This story is purely fan fiction and was not created, acknowledged or endorsed by Ghibli or Mary Norton's current copyright holders (whoever they may be), to whom all relevant characters and trademarks belong. No infringement is intended and absolutely no profit was or ever will be made. **_Sho's Theory of Relativity_** itself is fan domain and may be freely recopied and archived. Reader reactions are appreciated, as always; if you don't read it, it doesn't live!  
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